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Apple discontinued its original HomePod smart speaker a few years ago. Now, we have a sequel. The company has resurrected the bigger unit with upgraded audio, a more powerful chip, more smart home abilities and, importantly, a lower price. The overall design, however, is mostly unchanged. Some will think it’s still a little pricey at $299, however.

The HomePod has room-sensing tech, so it can read sound reflections to determine its position (near a wall or in free space) and adjust the audio in real-time. There’s also Spatial Audio support. But the most interesting updates are its smart home tools. First, a feature called Sound Recognition can monitor for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and send an alert to your iPhone if it hears one. This tool will be available in a software update “later this spring.” Since the new smart home standard Matter is (almost) everywhere, the 2023 HomePod can connect to and control gadgets compatible with it. Apple added that any smart home communications are end-to-end encrypted by default, and the company can’t read them.

The new HomePod is available for pre-order now and ships February 3rd. However, if you’re looking for something a little different, you could wait for a hub-styled smart home device. The latest rumors suggest Apple is working on an iPad-based device to go up against the likes of Google and Amazon.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Twitter is reportedly struggling to break even as advertisers continue to flee

Researchers find UV nail polish dryers can cause DNA damage and mutations

The best smart home gadgets for 2023

Wikipedia’s first desktop design update in a decade doesn’t rock the boat

‘Ultimate Sackboy’ brings Sony’s LittleBigPlanet mascot to mobile

Google may be working on a location tracker like Apple’s AirTag

It could be announced during Google I/O.

According to developer (and well-sourced leaker) Kuba Wojciechowski, Google’s Nest team is developing a tracker codenamed Grogu. It’ll reportedly include an onboard speaker, as well as support for Bluetooth Low Energy and ultra-wideband (UWB). Wojciechowski found evidence of the tracker when he noticed Google added support for locator tags in the developer hub for Fast Pair, the Android feature that quickly connects Bluetooth devices. Wojciechowski says the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro both shipped with UWB modules, which would allow them to direct you to nearby objects accurately.

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Amazon is shutting down the AmazonSmile charity program in February

It says the program ‘has not grown to create the impact’ it was hoping for.

Amazon plans to wind down AmazonSmile, its giving program for buyers to donate to their favorite charities with every purchase, by February 20th, 2023. Apparently, the program’s ability to make a meaningful impact was hampered by it having over a million eligible organizations worldwide. Donations were apparently spread too thin. According to Bloomberg, the company donated almost $500 million to charities over the past 10 years through AmazonSmile. Still, the average amount per charity was apparently only $230 due to the sheer number of participating organizations. The cynical approach is that Amazon is axing the program to help with its own cost-cutting. Surely some charitable donation is better than none?

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Boston Dynamics’ Atlas shows off its acrobatic ‘gopher’ skills

Robot, fetch me my tools.

Boston Dynamics showed off more of its Atlas robot’s stunning agility and dexterity in a new demo video, delivering a tool bag to a human at the top of some scaffolding. “This is more a demonstration of some of the robot’s new control capabilities, and a fun connection to our prior work,” Scott Kuindersma, Atlas team lead, said. “Our hope is that, if we can build the foundational technology that allows us to easily create and adapt dynamic behaviors like these, we should be able to leverage it down the road to perform real, physically demanding jobs.” The robot flips off the scaffolding at the end, too.

Continue reading.

 

Twitter Blue has arrived on Android, and just like on iOS, it will cost you $11 a month to pay for a subscription through Google Play. The social media website has updated its About page for Blue to add Android pricing for all the countries where the service is currently available, namely the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. 

Before this, you’d have to pay for a subscription via the web or an iOS device if you want to enjoy Blue’s perks on an Android phone. Take note, however, that paying through Google will cost you $3 more than paying through a web browser. By charging more when you pay via your device’s app store, Twitter is essentially passing the tech giants’ 30 percent commission onto you. If you don’t mind firing up a web browser to pay for Twitter Blue, you can score a year-long subscription for $84 per year, no matter what your phone’s operating system is. It’s a newly launched option that’s equivalent to paying $7 a month instead of $8. 

A Twitter Blue subscription will put a blue checkmark next to your name on the website and will give you access to features not yet available for non-paying users. One of those features lets you preview your tweet and gives you the option to “undo” it before it gets posted on your timeline. You also get access to bookmark folders, themes and custom app icons. But as TechCrunch notes, there’s no telling what Blue’s feature list will look like over the coming months: The company could very well add new perks or remove them in the future. The checkmark will likely remain as one of the service’s main selling points, however, seeing as Elon Musk previously called Twitter’s “lords & peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark” as “bullshit.”

 

Apple is reportedly working on an iPad-like smart home device designed to compete against Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub products, according to Bloomberg. It would reportedly be “essentially a low-end iPad” that would operate as a hub to control thermostats, lights and security systems, while also allowing FaceTime chats. It could be mounted on walls using magnetic clips or positioned more as a home hub-type device than a regular iPad. 

The company has also discussed the idea of building smart home displays larger than iPads, though there are no other details on those. None of the smart home products would be ready until 2024 at earliest. 

Rumors about potential Apple smart displays have popped up before. Last August, it was reported that the company had four smart home devices in its labs, including a kitchen accessory that combined an iPad with a speaker. (In the same report, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman correctly predicted the new HomePod model that arrived yesterday.) 

Apple is also reportedly working on a new version of Apple TV, set for release in the first half of 2024. It would have a faster processor but carry the same design as the current model. 

Smart home devices with touchscreens represent a potentially lucrative market segment still largely untapped by Apple. Amazon makes several versions of its Echo Show smart display, with prices ranging from around $30 for the Echo Show 8 to $250 for the Echo Show 15. Google has the Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, priced at $100 and $229 respectively. 

Apple just made a key update to its smart home family yesterday. Following the launch of new MacBook Pro and Mac mini models, it released a new $300 version of its larger HomePad that was discontinued last year. Notably, it features new smart home features along with updates like improved audio, an S7 chip and a lower price. Those include a built-in temperature and humidity sensor, along with a feature called Sound Recognition can monitor for smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and send an alert to your iPhone. 

 

Amazon plans to wind down AmazonSmile, its giving program that allows buyers to donate to their favorite charities with every purchase, by February 20th, 2023. In its announcement, the e-commerce giant said “the program has not grown to create the impact that [it] had originally hoped” almost a decade after it was launched. Apparently, the program’s ability to make meaningful impact was hampered by the fact that it has over 1 million eligible organizations worldwide. Donations were often spread too thin. 

Whenever people use the AmazonSmile website to make a purchase, the company donates 0.5 percent of what they paid to the charity of their choice at no additional cost to them. As a parting donation to participating organizations, Amazon will give them the equivalent of three months what they earned in 2022 through the program. Going forward, the company will focus its charitable work “in other areas where it can make meaningful change.” It gave a few examples of its future plans, such as investing $2 billion to build and preserve affordable housing, funding the computer science curriculum for 1 million students across thousands of schools and delivering 12 million meals this year through food banks. 

Amazon didn’t expound on what it meant by the program failing to make a meaningful impact. According to Bloomberg through, the company donated almost $500 million to charities over the past 10 years through AmazonSmile, but the average amount per donation is only $230 due to the sheer number of participating organizations. Still, critics can’t help but wonder if this is merely one of Amazon’s cost-cutting tactics.

If you’ll recall, Amazon recently announced that it’s expanding its planned job cuts to eliminate over 18,000 roles. Amazon was one of the companies that benefited from COVID lockdowns over the past few years and had to hire thousands of new people to keep up with the demand. Consumers eventually went back to their pre-pandemic shopping habits, and Amazon (with its bottomline affected by the shift) reportedly conducted cost-cutting reviews to figure out which units weren’t bringing in money. As a result, Amazon froze hiring, closed brick-and-mortar stores and shut down business units, in addition to cutting jobs. 

 

Since arriving on the market around 2010, gel manicures have become a staple in nail salons across the US and many parts of the world, and it’s easy to see why. Compared to traditional nail polish, gel variants are more resilient to damage and smudging, and they retain their shine until you remove the polish from your fingernails. Best of all, if you’re the impatient sort, you don’t need to wait an hour or more for a gel manicure to dry. Those benefits all come courtesy of the way the polish cures. Instead of waiting for a gel polish to dry naturally, you place your hands under a UV light, which activates the chemicals inside the gel, causing it to harden.

While the dangers of UV light — particularly in tanning settings — are well-known, before this week scientists had not studied how the ultraviolet lights used to cure gel polishes might affect human skin. You might think what we know about tanning beds applies here, but the devices used by nail salons emit a different spectrum of ultraviolet light. A group of researchers from the University of California San Diego decided to study the devices after reading an article about a beauty pageant contestant who was diagnosed with a rare form of skin cancer.

Using different combinations of human and mouse cells, the researchers found a single 20-minute session with an ultraviolet nail polish dryer led to as many as 30 percent of the cells in a petri dish dying. Three consecutive 20-minute sessions saw 65 to 70 percent of the exposed cells dying off. Among the remaining cells, the researchers saw evidence of mitochondrial and DNA damage, in addition to mutations that have been seen in skin cancer patients.

“Our experimental results and the prior evidence strongly suggest that radiation emitted by UV-nail polish dryers may cause cancers of the hand and that UV-nail polish dryers, similar to tanning beds, may increase the risk of early-onset skin cancer,” the researchers write in a study published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday. They warn that a longer epidemiological study is needed before they can conclusively say the use of UV drying devices leads to an increased risk of skin cancer, adding “it is likely that such studies will take at least a decade to complete and to subsequently inform the general public.” 

You might think the advice here is to avoid UV dryers, but it’s not so simple. Gel manicures have become an industry standard for a reason. For many people, regular nail polish starts to chip off after a day or so, making a traditional manicure often not worth the time, money or effort.  

 

It was only a matter of time until Google launched its own location tracker, similar to Apple’s AirTags, Samsung’s SmartTag, and of course, Tile. According to the developer (and well-sourced leaker) Kuba Wojciechowski, Google’s Nest team is developing a tracker codenamed “Grogu.” It’ll reportedly include an onboard speaker, as well as support for Bluetooth Low Energy and ultra-wideband (UWB). Wojciechowski found evidence of the tracker when he noticed that Google added support for locator tags in the developer hub for Fast Pair, the Android feature that lets you quickly connect Bluetooth devices. 

While there aren’t any specific details at this point, we can expect Google’s tracker to work like the competition (attach it to whatever you like, and keep tabs on its location with your phone). It’s also unclear if Google can replicate Apple’s admittedly slick AirTag experience. Wojciechowski says that the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro both shipped with UWB modules, which would allow them to direct you to nearby objects acccurately. But he notes that Google’s “finder” network won’t require UWB — BLE should be enough. 

While Google can’t guarantee that every Android phone will ship with UWB, Wojciechowski says Google is working with chipset makers to help them support Fast Pair. That means we could see third-party trackers rounding out the location network, something it’s hard to imagine Apple ever allowing. As for availability, Wojciechowski didn’t find any specific timing, but he notes that it could be announced at I/O this year. That makes sense, as Google is already far behind the location tracking competition.

 

Wikipedia is finally getting its first major redesign in a decade, but it may be notable precisely because of how little it changes the core experience. The newly launched rework looks very familiar, and instead eliminates some common hassles. A new sticky header provides quick access to search and article sections, while a revised search shows images and descriptions as you type. It’s easier to switch languages, and a table of contents helps you navigate content.

TechCrunch also points to smaller tweaks. A collapsible sidebar lets you remove distractions while reading. The default font size is larger, too, to reduce the strain on your eyes.

The Wikipedia update is rolling out now for English users. Wikimedia has already made the update available to 300 of the 318 active languages on the site. It’s already the default for Arabic and Greek readers. The team is still asking for feedback, so don’t be surprised if the site continues to evolve.

Wikimedia Foundation makes clear that it hasn’t removed any functionality, and that the changes led to real-world gains in testing with international volunteer groups. Users searched 30 percent more often, and scrolled 15 percent less. The redesign is meant to modernize Wikipedia by making it more accessible to a “next generation” of internet users who may not be very familiar with the web, according to the creators. You may not pay much notice to the changes if you’re a diehard reader, then, but those just coming online may appreciate the ease of use.

 

Serato launched DJ Pro 3.0 in December last year with new stem separation tools and it was only a matter of time until the company’s DAW would follow suit. It’s only about a month later and already stems have arrived with the latest update dropping today: Serato Studio 2.0.

The sampler section of Studio now includes small buttons above the waveform that allow you to target the vocals, melody, bass or drums from any track using Serato’s own machine-learning algorithm. It does a great job isolating the respective stem segments quickly, at least once the system has a few seconds to analyze a track. You can then try out variations on-the-fly while a song is playing.

The company recommends an M1 MacBook or higher for the best performance when using stems on Serato DJ and that should certainly carry over here. Although Studio is less of a live-performance tool than the DJ app, it helps to have software that allows relatively seamless adjustments as you go — especially processor-intensive stuff like this.

Stem separation has been a trend over the last year or two and Algoriddim’s djay Pro, one of the other leading apps in the market, has had a version of this in its own DJ app for a few years. The company even spun the tools off into a standalone app called Neural Mix Pro. That lets you extract stems for use in other apps, but isn’t a complete workstation for making beats on its own.

Serato has been growing Studio’s toolset into a more comprehensive DAW over time. It’s a helpful tool for pros who want a way to sketch out track ideas quickly and it’s an approachable introduction for those just getting started with beat making. The addition of stems makes this an especially useful complement to Serato DJ, rounding out the ecosystem to include a DAW and DJ app with deeper customization abilities than ever before. 

Serato Studio 2.0 is available today on the company’s website with options including a free limited account, a $10 per-month subscription or you can purchase a full license for the app for $249.

 

We’ve known for a while that Sony planned to bring PlayStation franchises to mobile platforms, but we were hoping for something with a unique hook. Instead, Sony has partnered with the independent developer and publisher Exient (Lemmings, Planet 53) on a mobile game starring LittleBigPlanet’s Sackboy. Ultimate Sackboy is an auto-running game for Android and iOS, launching globally on February 21st.

The title follows a well-worn formula: control a cute auto-running mascot, jumping and swerving lanes to avoid obstacles while snagging power-ups. Like Super Mario Run and other genre standards, you’ll play with your phone in portrait orientation. The plot revolves around the crocheted hero competing in the Ultimate Games, which we imagine as an Olympics for semi-retired video game mascots living in an artisan-crafted world. Unsurprisingly, the game’s Google Play listing mentions ads and in-app purchases, consistent with the trailer’s emphasis on acquiring costumes and cosmetics.

Although we’d love to see publishers like Sony bring something more unique to their phone-based spinoffs, an auto-runner starring a beloved mascot ticks the boxes publishers prioritize on mobile: maximum micro-transaction potential with minimal investment in unique gameplay.

The public launch will follow the game’s closed betas in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and Malta. You can sign up to pre-register on Google Play, and this page will notify you once it’s available on iOS (it will have iPhone and iPad versions).

 

Ahead of the next inevitable round of herp de derp “Skynet iz here” hot takes on social media, Boston Dynamics showed off more of its Atlas robot’s stunning agility and dexterity in a new demo video Wednesday morning. This time, the humanoid machine had to deliver a tool bag to the top of some scaffolding using only its roboparkour powers.  

In the video above, Atlas shows a surprising amount of forethought, grabbing and placing a wooden plank across a large gap before heading over to pick up the tool bag itself. From there, it’s a simple matter of climbing a set of stairs, balancing across said plank, hopping up a couple ledges, jump spinning in place to turn around and gently hucking the bag over its head to the platform above. That’s all before it shoves a box off its platform — carefully avoiding not tilting over the side itself and then, “dismounting with an inverted 540-degree flip that project engineers have dubbed the Sick Trick,'” according to Wednesday’s release.

“Parkour forces us to understand the physical limitations of the robot, and dance forces us to think about how precise and dexterous the whole-body motion can be,” Robin Deits, a software engineer on the Atlas controls team, said in that release. “Now, manipulation is forcing us to take that information and interpret it in terms of how we can get the hands to do something specific. What’s important about the Atlas project is that we don’t let go of any of those other things we’ve learned.” 

Except none of that is “a simple matter.” At the start of the 2000s, bipedal robots would wilt if you looked at them sideways, much less asked them to climb a set of stairs. In 2015, robots were still so janky that we ran supercuts of them falling down. And today, they — well Boston Dynamics’ at least, Elon’s robot is barely more than a skinny guy in a suit — can outrun, outjump, and outclimb the average sedentary American. It’s a damn good thing the company, along with six other robotics industry leaders, has pledged not to use its legion of bag-delivery bots for war. 

But don’t expect an Atlas to replace your local UPS driver anytime soon (for one, their union would never allow it) because for as impressive as this video is, it took a substantial amount of time and effort to develop. As you can see in the behind-the-scenes video above, Atlas suffered dents, scrapes, scratches, and more than a few tumbles in learning this routine. 

“This is more a demonstration of some of the robot’s new control capabilities, and a fun connection to our prior work,” Scott Kuindersma, Atlas team lead said. “Our hope is that, if we can build the foundational technology that allows us to easily create and adapt dynamic behaviors like these, we should be able to leverage it down the road to perform real, physically-demanding jobs with hustle. There are many pieces required to deliver a complete solution in a domain like manufacturing or construction—this video highlights a narrow slice of what we’re working on.” So maybe it isn’t so much the hyper-agile acrobots we need to worry about as it is the EOD machines armed with high explosives and piloted by the cops.