Category: Technology

There’s no such thing as having too much storage or too many backups, so it’s never a bad idea to pick up storage while it’s on sale. There are some good deals on Crucial solid state drives for President’s Day, including on the 1TB MX500. That model is 48 percent off at $52, the lowest price we’ve seen for it to date.

The MX500 is a 2.5-inch drive that will fit into most desktops and laptops. It supports read speeds up to 560MB/s and write speeds up to 510MB/s. There’s AES 256-bit hardware encryption to protect your data too. On top of that, the MX500 has integrated power loss immunity — if there’s a sudden power outage, the drive should still automatically save what you were working on. There are several MX500 options with storage capacities ranging from 250GB to 4TB, but you’ll get the most bang for your buck with the 1TB configuration right now.

Meanwhile, the sale includes a welcome discount on the Crucial P5, which is one of our favorite storage expansion options for the PlayStation 5. The 1TB version is almost half off at $81, though you’ll need to pick up a heatsink separately and attach it to the SSD before installing it in your console.

Some of Crucial’s external SSDs are on sale too. The 1TB X6, which supports read speeds up to 800MB/s, is $65 ($45 off the regular price). The X8, on the other hand, currently costs $73.09 for 1TB of storage. That model supports read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s. Both drives have drop, shock and vibration protection, according to Crucial.

Buy Crucial P5 Plus (1TB) at Amazon – $81Buy Crucial X6 (1TB) at Amazon – $65Buy Crucial X8 (2TB) at Amazon – $73.09

 

When it comes to making coffee at home, there are people who do it and there are people who are obsessed with it. For many of us, we can’t just grab a bag of pre-ground swill from the grocery store and slap it in an auto-drip machine each morning. We need an arsenal of gear capable of extracting the nuanced flavors out of your locally roasted beans. And, if you’re like me, you like having the option of at least seven brewing methods because you really never know what you’ll be in the mood for. For true coffee lovers, a versatile grinder is a crucial piece of the at-home setup.

Fellow has a proven track record for well-designed, sturdy coffee gear. The company makes everything from travel mugs to kettles, including a grinder primarily designed to prepare beans for pour-over. That first model, the Ode, houses flat burrs capable of 31 grind settings that can cover AeroPress, French press, cold brew and other brewing methods too. However, it’s not capable of producing the fine grounds you need for espresso, and it was a pricey $299 at launch (the company now sells it for $255).

Enter the Opus. Fellow’s second grinder is more versatile than the Ode and can be used to prep beans for 9-bar espresso in addition to pour-over, French press, cold brew and much more. It also has ten more grind settings than the previous model and employs conical burrs to achieve consistent results. Like the Ode, the Opus has a magnetically-aligned catch cup outfitted with a spouted ring that helps keep your counter clean, doing so with the assistance of Fellow’s anti-static technology. Also like its predecessor, the Opus doesn’t have a massive hopper to store beans on top: it’s meant to be a single-dose machine where you can grind up to 110 grams at a time. This saves space since the Opus is considerably shorter than a lot of the competition. Plus, that design choice gives the device a much more refined appearance than the typical coffee grinder.

I have been using the Baratza Encore since I compiled the first coffee buyer’s guide for Engadget in 2019. If you take a poll among professional baristas, I’d wager the majority of them would tell you that’s the gold standard for at-home coffee grinders. And it’s for good reason: the Encore is very versatile and has been producing consistent quality for years. It does have the big hopper up top, whether you want to store your beans there or not. It’s loud, and because it pushes ground coffee into the catch from the side, there’s a lot of mess that ends up on your counter.

The Opus quickly solved two of the issues I have with the Encore. First, it’s remarkably quiet. I can actually run the Opus at night or early in the morning while my two-year-old is still asleep in a room near the kitchen free from worry I’ll wake him. That’s not always the case with the Encore. Second, the Opus drops grounds straight down into the catch cup, leaving less room for debris to escape. Fellow’s new grinder doesn’t have a knocker to reduce grind retention like the Ode, but it doesn’t need one. When I put in 70 grams of whole beans, I get 70 grams of ground coffee every time. It’s been so consistent I no longer feel the need to reweigh grounds to make sure I have enough – an added step I undertook with the Encore. And when you’re grinding for espresso, Fellow has included an insert for the catch cup to make transferring small loads to a portafilter a much less messy affair.

Fellow has also made the Opus very easy to use. A rotating ring near the top spins to adjust to your desired coarseness. If you’re like me and forget which setting to use for French press or pour-over, Fellow has printed a guide inside the lid of the bean chamber. No more reaching for a notebook or your phone to Google, the details you need will be right there when you go to load whole beans.

Ease of use extends to the controls. There’s only a single button you press to operate the Opus: one press for 30 seconds, two for a minute and three for 90 seconds. You can also long press the button for the grinder to run a full two minutes. Unlike the Ode, the Opus doesn’t turn off when it senses all the beans are ground. Instead, it runs until the selected time runs out or you mosey back to and press the button one final time. The lack of auto-shutoff doesn’t bother me though, since the Encore runs until you turn it off with no set time options.

The Opus improves three things for my daily coffee routine. It runs quietly and it keeps my kitchen cleaner while producing consistently ground beans no matter which setting I put it on. It also looks a lot better than the two coffee grinders I’ve used for any length of time, mostly due to the fact that the lack of a large hopper makes it as much of a showpiece as a piece of brewing equipment. At $195, it’s significantly cheaper than the Ode but slightly more than the Encore. Those few extra dollars I’d gladly part with for clean counters, a toddler that sleeps a few more minutes and a dash of modern flair.

 

If you’re looking to take the first step toward improving your home audio setup beyond your devices’ built-in speakers, IKEA and Sonos’ Symfonisk lineup is a solid way to get started. The range of WiFi speakers includes several products designed to blend into your home, including one designed to look like artwork. Even better, the Symfonisk picture frame is currently on sale for $195, which is $65 off the regular price, until February 26th. It’s available in black and white.

Buy Symfonisk picture frame with WiFi speaker at IKEA – $195

The Symfonisk picture frame is part of the Sonos ecosystem, so it should play nicely with any other speakers you have from the company. It’s compatible with AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect, and you can use it to play audio from a host of streaming services. Moreover, you can pair two of the speakers together for stereo sound.

In addition to having the option to wall hang the Symfonisk picture frame, you’ll be able to flip out its feet and rest it against a wall or other surface. In truth, the “picture frame” descriptor is a little misleading, since you can’t simply drop in your favorite photo of your loved ones. However, you can swap the front panel for a different look or use third-party services to print custom covers.

 

The Supreme Court could soon redefine the rules of the internet as we know it. This week, the court will hear two cases, Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh, that give it an opportunity to drastically change the rules of speech online.

Both cases deal with how online platforms have handled terrorist content. And both have sparked deep concerns about the future of content moderation, algorithms and censorship.

Section 230 and Gonzalez v. Google

If you’ve spent any time following the various culture wars associated with free speech online over the last several years, you’ve probably heard of Section 230. Sometimes referred to as the “the twenty-six words that invented the internet,” Section 230 is a clause of the Communications Decency Act that shields online platforms from liability for their users’ actions. It also protects companies’ ability to moderate what appears on their platforms.

Without these protections, Section 230 defenders argue, the internet as we know couldn’t exist. But the law has also come under scrutiny the last several years amid a larger reckoning with Big Tech’s impact on society. Broadly, those on the right favor repealing Section 230 because they claim it enables censorship, while some on the left have said it allows tech giants to avoid responsibility for the societal harms caused by their platforms. But even among those seeking to amend or dismantle Section 230, there’s been little agreement about specific reforms.

Section 230 also lies at the heart of Gonzalez v. Google, which the Supreme Court will hear on February 21st. The case, brought by family members of a victim of the 2015 Paris terrorist attack, argues that Google violated US anti-terrorism laws when ISIS videos appeared in YouTube’s recommendations. Section 230 protections, according to the suit, should not apply because YouTube’s algorithms suggested the videos.

“It basically boils down to saying platforms are not liable for content posted by ISIS, but they are liable for recommendation algorithms that promoted that content,” said Daphne Keller, who directs the Program on Platform Regulation at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, during a recent panel discussing the case.

That may seem like a relatively narrow distinction, but algorithms underpin almost every aspect of the modern internet. So the Supreme Court’s ruling could have an enormous impact not just on Google, but on nearly every company operating online. If the court sides against Google, then “it could mean that online platforms would have to change the way they operate to avoid being held liable for the content that is promoted on their sites,” the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank, explains. Some have speculated that platforms could be forced to do away with any kind of ranking at all, or would have to engage in content moderation so aggressive it would eliminate all but the most banal, least controversial content.

“I think it is correct that this opinion will be the most important Supreme Court opinion about the internet, possibly ever,” University of Minnesota law professor Alan Rozenshtein said during the same panel, hosted by the Brookings Institution.

That’s why dozens of other platforms, civil society groups and even the original authors of Section 230 have weighed in, via “friend of the court” briefs, in support of Google. In its brief, Reddit argued that eroding 230 protections for recommendation algorithms could threaten the existence of any platform that, like Reddit, relies on user-generated content.

“Section 230 protects Reddit, as well as Reddit’s volunteer moderators and users, when they promote and recommend, or remove, digital content created by others,” Reddit states in its filing. “Without robust Section 230 protection, Internet users — not just companies — would face many more lawsuits from plaintiffs claiming to be aggrieved by everyday content moderation decisions.”

Yelp, which has spent much of the last several years advocating for antitrust action against Google, shared similar concerns. “If Yelp could not analyze and recommend reviews without facing liability, those costs of submitting fraudulent reviews would disappear,” the company argues. “If Yelp had to display every submitted review, without the editorial freedom Section 230 provides to algorithmically recommend some over others for consumers, business owners could submit hundreds of positive reviews for their own business with little effort or risk of a penalty.”

Meta, on the other hand, argues that a ruling finding 230 doesn’t apply to recommendation algorithms would lead to platforms suppressing more “unpopular” speech. Interestingly, this argument would seem to play into the right’s anxieties about censorship. “If online services risk substantial liability for disseminating third-party content … but not for removing third-party content, they will inevitably err on the side of removing content that comes anywhere close to the potential liability line,” the company writes. “Those incentives will take a particularly heavy toll on content that challenges the consensus or expresses an unpopular viewpoint.”

Twitter v. Taamneh

The day after the Supreme Court hears arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, it will hear yet another case with potentially huge consequences for the way online speech is moderated: Twitter v. Taamneh. And while the case doesn’t directly deal with Section 230, the case is similar to Gonzalez v. Google in a few important ways.

Like Gonzalez, the case was brought by the family of a victim of a terrorist attack. And, like Gonzalez, family members of the victim are using US anti-terrorism laws to hold Twitter, Google and Facebook accountable, arguing that the platforms aided terrorist organizations by failing to remove ISIS content from their services. As with the earlier case, the worry from tech platforms and advocacy groups is that a ruling against Twitter would have profound consequences for social media platforms and publishers.

“There are implications on content moderation and whether companies could be liable for violence, criminal, or defamatory activity promoted on their websites,” the Bipartisan Policy Center says of the case. If the Supreme Court were to agree that the platforms were liable, then “greater content moderation policies and restrictions on content publishing would need to be implemented, or this will incentivize platforms to apply no content moderation to avoid awareness.”

And, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in its filing in support of Twitter, platforms “will be compelled to take extreme and speech-chilling steps to insulate themselves from potential liability.”

There could even be potential ramifications for companies whose services are primarily operated offline. “If a company can be held liable for a terrorist organization’s actions simply because it allowed that organization’s members to use its products on the same terms as any other consumer, then the implications could be astonishing,” Vox writes.

What’s next

It’s going to be several more months before we know the outcome of either of these cases, though analysts will be closely watching the proceedings to get a hint of where the justices may be leaning. It’s also worth noting that these aren’t the only pivotal cases concerning social media and online speech.

There are two other cases, related to restrictive social media laws out of Florida and Texas, that might end up at the Supreme Court as well. Both of those could also have significant consequences for online content moderation.

In the meantime, many advocates argue that Section 230 reform is best left to Congress, not the courts. As Jeff Kosseff, a law professor at the US Naval Academy who literally wrote the book about Section 230, recently wrote, cases like Gonzalez “challenge us to have a national conversation about tough questions involving free speech, content moderation, and online harms.” But, he argues, the decision should be up to the branch of government where the law originated.

“Perhaps Congress will determine that too many harms have proliferated under Section 230, and amend the statute to increase liability for algorithmically promoted content. Such a proposal would face its own set of costs and benefits, but it is a decision for Congress, not the courts.”

 

A solid six percent of Americans think they can out-punch a Grizzly bear, another one in eight men think they can beat 23-time grand slam champion Serena Williams at tennis. On February 21st, this proud internet tradition of being very loud and very wrong about your physical prowess continues! On Tuesday, gamers around the world will get their shot at racing Sony AI’s GT Sophy — the one that’s already wiping the floor with folks who get paid to play this game professionally — when it arrives in the rev1.29 update for Gran Turismo 7 on the Playstation 5.

GT7 players will be able to access a special “Gran Turismo Sophy Race Together” mode from February 21st at 1am ET, when the update arrives. Players will face off against four separate GT Sophy AI opponents, all of whom’s vehicles are specced slightly differently so you’re not going up against a quartet of clones, in a four-circuit series striated by difficulty (beginner-intermediate-expert).

“The difference [between racers] is that, it’s essentially the power you have versus the other cars on the track,” Michael Spranger told Engadget. “You have different levels of performance. In the beginning level, you have a much more powerful vehicle — still within the same class, but you’re much faster [than your competition].” That performance gap continues to shrink as you move up in difficulty until you reach the one v one against GT Sophy in identically specced vehicles.

The Sophy you race here is the exact same Sophy that’s been winning against the pros, Peter Wurman explained. The AI has not been hobbled or dumbed down in any way ahead of this release. “The power the player has is a car advantage, which allows them to be competitive, but otherwise, GT Sophy is the same. Really good driver, just all across the board.”

This is a limited-time event. The GT Sophy races will only be available until the end of March. The Sony AI team is time-limiting this initial release on account of a few technical reasons but, “mostly this is a new game design and we want to try it out, get feedback, and then take what we learned and iterate on that,” Wurman explained. The team can’t share any specifics about where the program goes from here

“We believe this technology has a huge potential to really elevate player experience across different game types, different experiences,” Wurman continued. He notes that agent AIs like GT Sophy can accomplish a lot in terms of interacting with players but also sees related AI systems playing an expanded role as well. The “technology is really crucial for the content creation itself,” he said. “They’re going to these race tracks, doing detailed capturing in order to create the environment and, speaking generally, you can imagine AI has a really big potential to help with many of those processes.”

If you’re thinking about grabbing a copy of the game ahead of tomorrow’s release, you’ll want to get some laps in before the update arrives. Only players who’ve reached Collector Level 6 will be qualified to race against the AI.

 

The OnePlus 11 is a powerful phone, but the design isn’t what you’d call thrilling. Now, the company has teased a version called the OnePlus 11 Concept designed to counteract that narrative with… lots of LED lights. The “flowing back” has meandering stream-type LED lighting pattern with a ring around the camera module, along with a unibody glass design. It will be revealed on February 27th at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2023 in Barcelona, OnePlus announced.

With the design, OnePlus is adopting a gaming PC-type approach with the use of LED lighting. That’s reasonable considering the OnePlus 11 is one of the better gaming phones out there, with features like a 120Hz display, extremely fast 100W charging and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor. 

OnePlus has done special edition phones before, including Star Wars and Pac-Man themed devices. However, this looks like its first with external LED lighting that takes a page from the Nothing Phone 1’s transparent, light-up back. It also borrows a bit from the OnePlus 8T concept that used a color-changing back.

In case you need a reason for the lighting, the company says it’s to “show the engineering breakthroughs of the OnePlus 11 Concept by highlighting the icy blue pipelines which run through the entire back of the phone, almost like OnePlus 11 Concept has its own series of blood vessels.” 

It’s not clear if it’s called “Concept” because it’s a one-off concept product, or if that’s the name for a special edition phone that will go on sale. If it’s the latter, it would certainly stand out from other smartphones. In any case, we should learn more when it’s unveiled on February 27th at 3PM ET.

 

Hey, if Twitter is making money from it, why not? Facebook’s parent company, Meta, announced its own Twitter Blue-like subscription called Meta Verified on Sunday morning. Mark Zuckerberg took to his newly launched broadcast channel to share the news, saying the subscription service would give users a blue badge, additional impersonation protection and direct access to customer support. Meta plans to test the subscription first in Australia and New Zealand before rolling it out to other countries. When Meta Verified does come to the US, it will cost $15 per month through the company’s apps on iOS and Android. On the web, where app store commissions don’t apply, the service will be $12 per month.

The company told Engadget the subscription will only be available to users 18 years or older. Meta will also require a government-issued ID that matches the Facebook or Instagram account’s profile name and photo. Once you’re verified, you’re locked in to that profile name, username, date of birth and photo. If you want to change, you’ll have to go through the verification process again.

The blue tick on Twitter does come with the cringe-inducing text of: “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.” (And you know I click to check.) Will Meta take a similar approach? And can we stop our egos from chasing that Instagram blue tick? And by “we,” I mean… me.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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The best tablets for 2023

We’ve got picks for every ecosystem

While tablets don’t always get the same level of attention as smartphones or laptops – landing right in the middle in size and specs – they’ve become an increasingly important device for many, particularly with the shift to working and learning from home. There are a lot of options, so it can be difficult to pick the right one. We’ve done a bunch of the hard work for you, and we’ve got our top picks across a range of categories and prices, smartly timed after the release of the latest slates from both Apple and Samsung.

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Anime classics, including ‘Sailor Moon,’ ‘Naruto’ and ‘Death Note,’ are free to watch on YouTube

Viz Media has put a lot of free anime up on its YouTube channel.

Viz Media has uploaded some of the most well-known anime series to YouTube, for free. You can watch Sailor Moon – the old series that aired in the ‘90s – Naruto, Death Note, Inuyasha, Hunter X Hunter and others on the publisher’s account. Viz has organized the episodes into playlists. However, you’ll have to be in the correct region (North America, it seems) to get access. No free anime for us Brits at the moment.

Continue reading.

Meta is bringing Telegram-like ‘channels’ to Instagram

The company will test the feature on Messenger and Facebook as well.

Meta has set its sights on copying a new messaging app: Telegram. Mark Zuckerberg just showed off “broadcast channels,” a new Instagram feature that brings one-way messaging to the app. The company is testing the feature with a handful of creators and plans to bring the Telegram-like functionality to Facebook and Messenger as well. Broadcast channels allow creators to stream updates to their followers’ inboxes, much like channels on Telegram. Those who join the channels can react to messages and vote in polls, but can’t participate in the conversation directly.

Continue reading.

NBA legend Paul Pierce settles with SEC over allegedly false crypto statements

He plugged EthereumMax on Twitter without disclosing payments he received.

NBA Hall of Famer Paul “The Truth” Pierce agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission over a cryptocurrency he promoted on Twitter. The government agency found Pierce violated anti-touting and antifraud provisions of federal securities laws. Pierce’s case echoes Kim Kardashian’s $1.26 million settlement in October for plugging the same currency. Pierce and Kardashian were also sued last year for their involvement in the scheme.

Continue reading.

 

A strong amateur Go player has beat a highly-ranked AI system after exploiting a weakness discovered by a second computer, The Financial Times has reported. By exploiting the flaw, American player Kellin Pelrine defeated the KataGo system decisively, winning 14 of 15 games without further computer help. It’s a rare Go win for humans since AlphaGo’s milestone 2016 victory that helped pave the way for the current AI craze. It also shows that even the most advanced AI systems can have glaring blind spots. 

Pelrine’s victory was made possible by a research firm called FAR AI, which developed a program to probe KataGo for weaknesses. After playing over a million games, it was able to find a weakness that could be exploited by a decent amateur player. It’s “not completely trivial but it’s not super-difficult” to learn, said Pelrine. He used the same method was to beat Leela Zero, another top Go AI. 

Here’s how it works: the goal is to create a large “loop” of stones to encircle an opponent’s group, then distract the computer by making moves in other areas of the board. Even when its group was nearly surrounded, the computer failed to notice the strategy. “As a human, it would be quite easy to spot,” Pelrine said, since the encircling stones stand out clearly on the board.

The flaw demonstrates that AI systems can’t really “think” beyond their training, so they often do things that look incredibly stupid to humans. We’ve seen similar things with chat bots like the one employed by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. While it was good at repetitive tasks like coming up with a travel itinerary, it also gave incorrect information, berated users for wasting its time and even exhibited “unhinged” behavior — likely due to the models it was trained on. 

Lightvector (the developer of KataGo) is certainly aware of the problem, which players have been exploiting for several months now. In a GitHub post, it said it’s been working on a fix for a variety of attack types that use the exploit.

 

It appears SpaceX is preparing to offer global roaming. As first reported by PCMag, the company recently began emailing customers in countries where Starlink service isn’t available yet to invite them to try a new $200 per month package that allows its terminals to provide internet access “from almost anywhere on land in the world.”

As The Verge notes, it’s not clear how SpaceX will follow through on the promise to provide internet from nearly anywhere. Despite the company’s growing constellation of small satellites, it’s still waiting to obtain regulatory approval to offer internet access in many key markets, including India and Pakistan. To that point, the email SpaceX sent out notes global roaming services are “contingent on regulatory approvals.” It adds customers may experience “brief periods of poor connectivity, or none at all” while it works to expand its satellite network. Potential customers should also be prepared to pay an import fee for their Starlink terminal, on top of the kit’s $599 price.

SpaceX already offers a few, more limited roaming options. Most notably, there’s the company’s Portability package for existing residential users, which allows those customers to use their Starlink terminal while traveling within their home continent. At $25 per month on top of the company’s $110 monthly subscription fee, the package is cheaper than the global roaming service SpaceX recently began emailing potential customers about, but the company requires those who spend “an extended period of time” away from home to change their permanent address.

 

Starting in May, Amazon will require employees to work out of the office at least three days per week. The company announced the plan in a memo published on Friday and attributed to CEO Andy Jassy (via CNN). In advocating for the policy, Jassy said a hybrid work arrangement would “strengthen” Amazon’s corporate culture and lead to better collaboration among its workforce.

“It’s not simple to bring many thousands of employees back to our offices around the world, so we’re going to give the teams that need to do that work some time to develop a plan,” Jassy said. “We know that it won’t be perfect at first, but the office experience will steadily improve over the coming months (and years) as our real estate and facilities teams smooth out the wrinkles, and ultimately keep evolving how we want our offices to be set up to capture the new ways we want to work.”

Shortly after the pandemic began, Amazon said it expected employees to return to the office in October 2020. The company went on to push back that date multiple times as successive waves of the coronavirus forced cities around the world to lock down. Amazon’s announcement comes in the same week that Activision confirmed it would require Blizzard employees to work out of the office at least three days per week starting in July. Like Blizzard, Amazon has seen many of its workers move to organize in response to the company’s policies. Most notably, there was JFK8, the Staten Island facility that became the first unionized Amazon workhouse when the majority of its workers voted to unionize last year. The move also comes after Amazon confirmed, at the start of the year, it would lay off more than 18,000 employees.