Category: Technology

Twitch is testing a new feature that gives viewers a way to make sure their favorite streamer (and their fellow fans) can see their message in the chatbox. The livestreaming platform has given select channels access to an experimental feature called “Elevated Chat,” which pins a viewer’s message for visibility if they’re willing to pay for it. Similar to YouTube’s Super Chat, the more people pay, the longer their message stays highlighted. A payment of $5 will elevate their message for 30 seconds, while $10 will get them a minute. If they want 1.5 minutes, they’ll have to pay $25. Two minutes? That’s $50. And if they want their message to stay highlighted for 2.5 minutes, they better be prepared to pay $100 for it. 

Paying $100 on YouTube’s Super Chat is typically enough to highlight a message for an hour. That said, while the features are similar, their implementations aren’t exactly the same. YouTube adds markers to the top of the chatbox for each Super Chat, and clicking on them will take viewers to the donor’s message. Meanwhile, Twitch is testing two potential locations for elevated chats. Streamers who’ve been chosen to participate will see the highlighted messages appear either at the top of the chatbox or at the bottom of the video. Also, it sounds like there can only be one highlighted message at a time, since Twitch said in the feature’s support page that viewers will enter a queue if multiple people pay for elevated chats at the same time.

Of course, $100 for 2.5 minutes of visibility sounds pretty outrageous no matter what — especially if you can just pay for five 30-second elevated messages for $25. The experiment will last for four weeks, after which Twitch will likely look at data from the test to decide whether to give the feature a wider rollout.

 

Meta is done rolling out support for non-fungible tokens or NFTs in the US. The company first started giving select creators in the country the option to display their tokens on Facebook and Instagram earlier this year. But now everyone in the US can display their collections on both platforms, whether they’re NFTs they’ve created and are selling or something they’ve purchased from creators. Those who have both social media apps can also cross-post their digital collectibles from either app so they don’t have to share them twice.

In addition, the ability to post NFT collections on Instagram is now live for users in 100 countries. The social network first announced that it was going to expand the feature’s availability back in August to countries in Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas. This probably doesn’t sound like good news for people who aren’t fond of NFTs or are concerned about their environmental impact. But it looks like Meta is set on making them a part of its platforms in its journey towards creating the metaverse it envisions. 

To be able to display their collection, a user must have a supported digital wallet, which includes Rainbow, Trust Wallet, Dapper, Coinbase Wallet and MetaMask, installed on their device. They then have to link their wallet to either or both apps by going to the “digital collectibles” tab in their app settings. Once they’ve linked their wallets, they’ll be able to view their collectibles through the Facebook or Instagram app and share their NFTs to their feed. 

 

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted new rules to address the growing risk of “space junk” or abandoned satellites, rockets and other debris. The new “5-year-rule” will require low-Earth operators to deorbit their satellites within five years following the completion of missions. That’s significantly less time than the previous guideline of 25 years. 

“But 25 years is a long time,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “There is no reason to wait that long anymore, especially in low-earth orbit. The second space age is here. For it to continue to grow, we need to do more to clean up after ourselves so space innovation can continue to respond.”

Rosenworcel noted that around 10,000 satellites weighing “thousands of metric tons” have been launched since 1957, with over half of those now defunct. The new rule “will mean more accountability and less risk of collisions that increase orbital debris and the likelihood of space communication failures.”

However, some US representatives don’t necessarily agree with the decision. Members of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology said in a letter that such decisions are often taken by NASA. By acting unilaterally, the FCC “could create uncertainly and potentially conflicting guidance” for the space industry. They asked the FCC to explain the decision to Congress, saying “this would ensure that procedural measures such as the Congressional Review Act are not necessary.”

NASA has said there are “23,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth.” It noted that China’s 2007 anti-satellite test “added more than 3,500 pieces of large, trackable debris and many more smaller debris to the debris problem.”

 

New York is following California’s lead by mandating that all new cars, pickups and SUVs sold in the state must be either EVs or plug-in hybrids, Governor Kathy Hochul announced. To reach that goal, 35 percent of new cars must be zero-emission by 2026 and 60 percent by 2030. New school buses must also be zero emissions by 2035. A public hearing will be held before the rules are put into place.

Hochul ordered the state’s environmental agency to create similar standards to those adopted by California that phases out all fossil-fuel-only car sales by 2035. Those rules went into last month and were designed to reduce passenger vehicle pollution 25 percent by 2037, with 9.5 fewer internal-combustion engine (ICE) only vehicles sold by 2035.

“We had to wait for California to take a step because there’s some federal requirements that California had to go first — that’s the only time we’re letting them go first,” the governor said in a press conference yesterday.

The state is following California’s actions for a reason. The Clean Air Act permits California to set its own pollution rules, but other states aren’t allowed to do that. However, they can follow California once it acts — so California must pave the way for any emissions rules implemented by individual states.

The governor also unveiled a $10 million Drive Clean Rebate Program. That gives residents a $2,000 rebate toward the purchase of over 60 EVs and plug-in hybrids that’s on top of the $7,500 federal tax rebate. The state has spent $92 million on the program to date. The state also announced the installation of its 100th fast charger as part of the EVolve charging network. 

“With sustained state and federal investments, our actions are incentivizing New Yorkers, local governments, and businesses to make the transition to electric vehicles,” Hochul said.

 

Two of the eBay executives who were charged for staging a cyberstalking campaign against the creators of the eCommerceBytes newsletter have been sentenced to prison. The Justice Department says that these execs, along with five other former eBay employees, worked together to intimidate David and Ina Steiner. They apparently hatched a scheme targeting the Steiners shortly after Ina published an article in their newsletter about a lawsuit eBay filed accusing Amazon of poaching its sellers. David said the people involved in their harassment made their lives “a living hell.”

James Baugh, eBay’s former senior director of safety and security, was sentenced to almost five years in prison and was ordered to pay a fine of $40,000. Meanwhile, David Harville, eBay’s former Director of Global Resiliency and the last person in the case who pleaded guilty, got a two-year sentence and was ordered to pay a $20,000 fine. 

According to the DOJ, the group sent disturbing deliveries to the couple’s home, including “a book on surviving the death of a spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects.” They also sent the couple threatening Twitter messages and posted on Craigslist to invite the public to partake in sexual encounters at the victims’ home. Authorities also said that Baugh, Harville and another eBay employee monitored the couple’s home in person with the intention of attaching a GPS tracker to their car. 

Based on the case’s court documents, David Wenig, who was eBay’s CEO at the time, sent another top exec a message that said “If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time” 30 minutes after Ina’s post was published. In turn, that executive sent Wenig’s message to Baugh, adding that Ina was a “biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN.” As The Washington Post notes, Wenig was not charged in the case but is facing a civil lawsuit from the Steiners, who accused him of attempting to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them.” He denied any knowledge of the harassment campaign. 

As for Baugh and Harville, both asked the Steiners for forgiveness, according to The Post. “I take 100% responsibility for this, and there is no excuse for what I have done. The bottom line is simply this: If I had done the right thing and been strong enough to make the right choice, we wouldn’t be here today, and for that I am truly sorry,” Baugh said.

 

Ahead of bringing its Arc desktop GPUs to everyone in a couple of weeks, Intel has revealed more details about what to expect from the graphics cards in terms of specs and performance. The A770, which starts at $329, will have 32 Xe cores, 32 ray-tracing units and a 2,100MHz graphics clock. In terms of RAM, it comes in 8GB and 16GB configurations, with up to 512 Gb/s and 560 Gb/s of memory bandwidth, respectively.

As for the A750, which Intel just announced will start at $289, that has 28 Xe cores, 28 ray-tracing units, a 2,050MHz graphics clock, 8GB of memory and up to 512 Gb/s of memory bandwidth. All three cards, which will be available on October 12th, have 225W of total power.

Intel claims that, based on benchmarking tests, you’ll get more bang for your buck with these cards than NVIDIA’s mid-range GeForce RTX 3060. It says the A770 offers 42 percent greater performance per dollar vs. the RTX 3060, while the A750 is seemingly 53 percent better on a per-dollar basis.

It claims that, in most of the games it tested, the A770’s 16GB configuration delivered better ray-tracing performance than the similarly priced RTX 3060 (which, in fairness, debuted back in early 2021). When it came to Fortnite, Intel says the A770 had 1.56 times the ray-tracing performance of the RTX 3060.

Of course Intel is going to tout its GPUs as being better than the competition. We’ll have to wait for the results of our own Intel Arc benchmarking tests to have a true sense of the performance.

In any case, it’s looking like NVIDIA is about to have more competition on the GPU front. Only this time, it’s from an established brand that just so happens to be behind many of the processors powering the PCs that might very well have used NVIDIA cards otherwise.

 

A tranche of Elon Musk’s private messages have been made public as part of his ongoing lawsuit with Twitter. The messages, revealed in a court filing Thursday, shed new light on Musk’s behind-the-scenes negotiations with Twitter’s leadership, as well discussions with former CEO Jack Dorsey, and how Musk’s talks with CEO Parag Agrawal quickly soured.

The messages include the moment Musk tells Agrawal he wants to acquire Twitter and take it private, rather than join the board. Agrawal confronts Musk about an April 9th tweet questioning if “Twitter is dying.”

Agrawal writes to Musk:

You are free to tweet “is Twitter dying?” or anything else about Twitter – but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context. Next time we speak, I’d like to you provide you [sic] perspective on the level of the internal distraction right now and how it [sic] hurting our ability to do work. I hope the AMA will help people get to know you, to understand why you believe in Twitter, and to trust you – and I’d like the company to get to a place where we are more resilient and don’t get distracted but we aren’t there right now.

Musk responded less than a minute later. “What did you get done this week? I’m not joining the board. This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”

Twitter board chair Bret Taylor followed up with Musk a few minutes later asking to talk. “Fixing Twitter by chatting with Parag won’t work,” Musk tells Taylor. “Drastic action is needed. This is hard to do as a public company, as purging fake users will make the numbers look terrible, so restructuring should be done as a private company. This is Jack’s opinion too.”

The messages also provide a glimpse into the relationship between Dorsey and Musk. Dorsey has publicly said that “Elon is the singular solution I trust,” but hasn’t publicly commented since Musk sued in an attempt to renege on the acquisition.

But in the newly released messages, it’s clear Dorsey has wanted Musk to take on an active role at Twitter for some time. Dorsey tells Musk that he wanted him to join Twitter’s board of directors long before Musk acquired a large stake in the company.

“Back when we had the activist come in, I tried my hardest to get you on our board and our board said no. That’s about the time I decided I needed to work to leave, as hard as it was for me,” Dorsey says. “I think the main reason is the board is just super risk averse and saw adding you as more risk, which I though was completely stupid and backwards, but I only had one vote, and 3% of company, and no dual class shares. Hard set up. We can discuss more.”

Dorsey seemed to be referring to Elliott Management, the activist investor that attempted to oust Dorsey in early 2020.

Notably, this conversation occurred in late March, after Musk had acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Twitter, but before his stake had been made public. He and Dorsey also discussed the Twitter cofounder’s belief that Twitter “can’t be a company.”

Dorsey writes to Musk:

I believe it must be an open source protocol, funded by a foundation of sorts that doesn’t own the protocol, only advances it. A bit like what Signal has done. It can’t have an advertising model. Otherwise you have surface area that governments and advertisers will try to influence and control. If it has a centralized entity behind it, it will be attacked. This isn’t complicated work, it just has to be done right so it’s resilient to what has happened to twitter.

Musk responds that the idea is “super interesting” and that “it’s worth both trying to move Twitter in a better direction and doing something new that’s decentralized.”

The following month, Dorsey also attempted to play mediator between Musk and Agrawal, at one point arranging a call between the three of them. “You and I are in complete agreement,” Musk tells Dorsey. “Parag is just moving far too slowly and trying to please people who will not be happy no matter what he does.”

“At least it became clear that you can’t work together,” Dorsey later responds. “That was clarifying.”

 

Videos on Twitter will now look a lot more like TikTok. The company announced that it’s switching to a full-screen “immersive” video player for watching clips. It’s also borrowing the now-familiar “swipe up” gesture that will allow people to endlessly scroll through more videos on the platform.

The update will make watching videos on Twitter feel a lot more like browsing TikTok or Instagram’s Reels, at least in terms of the user interface. The changes are limited to Twitter’s iOS app for now, but the company said a similar update for Android could arrive in the “coming weeks.”

While Twitter has long promoted video, especially live video, in different parts of its app, the change is one of the company’s most aggressive moves to push video on its users. It could also prove controversial, as some users could find the new full-screen videos disruptive. The company notes that users can navigate back to the original tweet using the back arrow in the top left corner of a clip.

Separately, Twitter is also testing out a change to drive more people to video content across its platform. The company is experimenting with a new section for video recommendations in Twitter’s Explore page. Those suggestions will be “available to people in select countries using Twitter in English on iOS and Android.”

 

As with many other industries, the tech sector has been feeling the squeeze of the global economic slowdown this year. Meta isn’t immune to that. Reports in May suggested that the company would slow down the rate of new hires this year. Now, Bloomberg reports that Meta has put all hiring on hold. 

CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also said to have told staff that there’s likely more restructuring and downsizing on the way. “I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by now, but from what we’re seeing it doesn’t yet seem like it has, so we want to plan somewhat conservatively,” Zuckerberg reportedly told employees. 

The company is planning to reduce budgets for most of its teams, according to Bloomberg. Zuckerberg is said to be leaving headcount decisions in the hands of team leaders. Measures may include moving people to other teams and not hiring replacements for folks who leave.

Meta declined to comment on the report. The company directed Engadget to remarks Zuckerberg made during Meta’s most recent earnings call in July. “Given the continued trends, this is even more of a focus now than it was last quarter,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “Our plan is to steadily reduce headcount growth over the next year. Many teams are going to shrink so we can shift energy to other areas, and I wanted to give our leaders the ability to decide within their teams where to double down, where to backfill attrition, and where to restructure teams while minimizing thrash to the long-term initiatives.”

In an earnings report, Meta disclosed that, in the April-May quarter, its revenue dropped by one percent year-over-year. It’s the first time the company has ever reported a fall in revenue.

Word of the hiring freeze ties in with a report from last week, which suggested that Meta has quietly been ushering some workers out the door rather than conducting formal layoffs. In July, it emerged that the company asked team heads to identify “low performers” ahead of possible downsizing. The company is said to have been cutting costs on other fronts, such as by cutting contractors and killing off some projects in its Meta Reality Labs division. Those reportedly included a dual-camera smartwatch.

 

It’s only natural that a person’s tastes and preferences change over time. So after years of thirsting for big, beefy gaming laptops with shiny lights, I’ve started gravitating towards more understated all-rounders that don’t scream “Look at me.” And for the last few generations, MSI’s Stealth 15M line has been one of the best at balancing good performance with a discreet appearance. But unfortunately, it feels like MSI is coasting with the 2022 model. While there aren’t a ton of major flaws, things like the Stealth’s display, battery life and audio just aren’t quite as nice as I would’ve liked.

Design

For a gaming notebook, the Stealth 15M is about as incognito as it gets. It’s got a simple, somewhat boxy build with a matte black finish (which is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, by the way). The only visual flair, at least on the outside, is MSI’s dragon logo, which gets a new holographic treatment for 2022.

Then you open it up and you get MSI’s lovely Spectrum backlit keyboard, a big speaker grill that runs the width of the deck and a smallish touchpad. Along its sides MSI includes a good selection of ports including four USB 3.2 ports (two Type-A and two Type-C, one of which supports DisplayPort), a full-size HDMI 2.1 connector and a combo headphone/mic jack. And with a weight of just under four pounds (3.96 lbs), the Stealth is actually a touch lighter than a lot of other 15-inch gaming laptops (and some 14-inch systems too).

Display, sound and webcam

On paper, the Stealth 15M’s screen looks like a perfect match for its specs. It’s a 15.6-inch IPS panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. It even has a matte finish to help prevent distracting reflections. The issue is that because it has somewhat dull colors and a tested brightness of around 250 nits, movies and games look kind of lifeless. Sure, if you like gaming in darker environments, it’s not a big deal. But its mediocre light output also means that in sunny rooms, it can be difficult to read text, especially if you’re someone who prefers dark mode apps.

As for audio, the Stealth features dual two-watt speakers that can get pretty loud, though they are lacking a bit of bass. Don’t get me wrong, they’re perfectly fine, I was just hoping for a little more considering the size of its grille. And then perched above the display is a 720p webcam which is serviceable but it doesn’t deliver the kind of quality you’d want for live streaming. It’s more so you can show your face during Zoom meetings, and that’s about it.

But once again, while nothing is egregiously bad, I feel like MSI is doing the bare minimum here. Its speakers are just ok, its webcam doesn’t even capture full HD and that big chin below the display makes the whole laptop look sort of dated.

Performance

When it comes to performance the Stealth has plenty of oomph thanks to an Intel Core i7-1280P CPU and an NVIDIA RTX 3060 GPU. Our review unit even comes with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM, the latter of which is arguably overkill given the rest of the system’s specs. However, you’ll want to make sure you figure out where the Stealth’s fan speed settings are in the MSI Center app, because when this thing spins up, you’re in for more than just a subtle whoosh.

In Shadows of the Tomb Raider at 1920 x 1080 and highest settings, the Stealth averaged 106 fps, which is just a tiny bit better than the 102 fps we got from the similarly-sized Alienware x14. Meanwhile, in Metro Exodus, the Stealth tied the Alienware’s performance, with both machines hitting 55 fps at full HD and ultra settings. So not exactly face-melting horsepower, but still more than enough to play modern AAA titles with plenty of graphical bells and whistles enabled.

Keyboard and touchpad

The Spectrum keyboard on the Stealth 15M has a soft, cushy press, though sadly, you can’t adjust its color pattern like on a lot of other gaming laptops.

One thing I really like about the Stealth 15M is its Spectrum keyboard. Not only do the keys have a soft, cushy press, they let just the right amount of light to leak out the sides, adding a little razzle dazzle without searing your retinas. And of course, you can turn everything off if you want to go fully undercover. Below that you get a touchpad that measures just four inches wide and two and half inches tall, which can feel a bit cramped at times. That said, having an undersized touchpad isn’t as big of a deal as it might be on a more mainstream notebook. Most gamers will probably carry an external mouse since touchpads really aren’t ideal for gaming.

Battery life

Perhaps the biggest weakness of the Stealth 15M is its battery life. It comes with a 53.8Whr power cell, which feels frustratingly small compared to the Alienware x14, whose battery is 50 percent larger at 80Whr, despite both systems being about the same size. That results in some pretty disappointing longevity, with the Stealth lasting just four hours and 15 minutes on our local video rundown test versus 9:45 for the x14 and 5:42 for the more powerful Razer Blade 15.

Wrap-up

After using the Stealth 15M for a while, I’m not really mad, I’m just disappointed. I love the general design and aesthetic and the Stealth delivers a great balance of performance and portability. In a lot of ways it feels like a more grown-up take on thin-and-light gaming laptop.

The issue is that it almost feels like MSI has neglected the Stealth line. Compared to previous years, the main upgrades for 2022 are a refreshed CPU and GPU along with a new badge on its lid. That’s not nothing, but I know MSI can do better and I’m really hoping to see the Stealth get a full redesign sometime soon.

Ultimately, assuming you can stomach the short battery life, the value of the Stealth 15M hinges a lot on its price. I’ve seen this thing listed as high as $1,700 from retailers like Walmart, which is simply too much. At that point, you’re much better off going for a notebook with a slightly smaller screen like the Alienware X14 and getting very similar performance, or opting for Asus’ Zephyrous G14 while also saving a couple hundred bucks in the process. But if you can nab the Stealth for under $1,400, a lot of the system’s trade-offs become a lot more palatable. I just wish this version of the Stealth felt more like James Bond and less like Agent Cody Banks.