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Parler parent company Parlement Technologies has cut the “majority” of its staff in recent weeks, according to a new report. The Verge reports that the company has slashed close to 75 percent of staff, including several executives, in recent weeks with “approximately 20” workers remaining between both entities at the end of 2022.

Parler didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the layoffs or how many staffers remain. The layoffs seem to roughly coincide with other difficulties for the “free speech” social media app. Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, had struck a deal to buy the service for an undisclosed amount in October. In December, Parlement Technologies announced the deal was off, with a Parler rep claiming the decision had been made in mid-November due to Ye’s “ongoing business difficulties.” Layoffs began shortly after, at the end of November, The Verge now reports.

Parler was originally launched in 2018, but rose to prominence in 2020 as several high profile Republicans announced they were leaving Twitter in favor of Parler. The app billed itself as a “free speech” social network that eschewed the “censorship” of mainstream social media platforms like Twitter. It gained popularity as a free-wheeling alternative that had few rules or moderation policies.

That changed after January 6th 2021, when Amazon, Apple and Google all cut off the app from their services over the company’s inability to address violent threats on the platform. The app eventually made its way back to Apple and Google’s app stores after implementing substantial changes to its content moderation practices.

 

The rumors were true, apparently. Samsung has announced that its first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2023 will take place February 1st at 1PM Eastern. And unlike last year’s events, the company is comfortable with an in-person presentation — it’s inviting the media to The Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. You can still watch a livestream on Samsung’s website, of course.

Samsung hasn’t said what to expect, but it’s not-so-subtly teasing a Galaxy S23 launch between a likely triple-camera teaser in the invitation (above) and the nature of its pre-order plans. Americans can reserve the future Galaxy devices on February 1st. Those who sign up for the reserve system by that day will get $50 in Samsung Credit if they pre-order one device, or $100 if they snap up two.

As for what the Galaxy S23 will entail? Leaks have suggested Samsung will drop the Exynos chips it frequently uses in some markets in favor of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The S23 Ultra might also pack a 200-megapixel main camera in place of the 108MP sensor from last year’s model, while the regular S23 and S23+ models might have 50MP cams. While the design might not change much, you could see improved selfie cameras, emergency satellite messaging and possibly a flat display on the Ultra variant. It’s safe to say we’ll be at the event to see the new hardware for ourselves.

 

Kano Computing is back with another oddball puck device with a creative but somewhat hazy premise. The Stem Projector is a spin-off of the Stem Player, the audio remixing gadget launched in 2021 in collaboration with the artist formerly known as Kanye West. With its new product, the company ditches the problematic Ye collaboration and shifts its focus from music to video.

Practically speaking, the new product is a battery-powered projector for movies or art. The Stem Projector lets you watch regular videos, remix preloaded clips and create visual landscapes. It looks similar to (but is slightly larger than) the Stem Player, as this model is also a fleshy puck with swirling lights and buttons. It has a mini-HDMI port to plug in other devices, and it supports AirPlay and Chromecast. However, it only has a reported maximum brightness of 300 lumens or 150 ANSI lumens, making it a hard sell as a standard projector.

But the Stem Projector also builds on the company’s creative focus, encouraging you to play and remix. For example, you can slide your finger along its haptic, touch-sensitive ring array to channel surf in the machine-learning-powered “Galaxy View,” a dreamlike collection of preloaded and live content. Additional controls let you change the size and shape of the images and trigger similar thematic content. In addition, Kano says it allows you to rotoscope characters and apply filters like splicing together clips with related color themes.

If that description still leaves you confused, this marketing video from Kano’s Twitter account may help:

The WiFi-enabled projector has 256GB of internal storage, and you can add more by inserting a microSD card. In addition, the device includes a built-in kickstand, allowing you to prop it up at various angles. (You can project video onto higher walls or a ceiling by placing the device upright in its opened carrying case.) The company says its battery can last four to five hours of continuous use.

It sounds like a gadget you would need to play with to fully understand — and determine whether it’s worth its steep asking price. However, without access to that, we’re left with a somewhat intriguing marketing tease that suggests a “what” but hasn’t yet offered a compelling “why.”

Kano is taking pre-orders now for the Stem Projector. The first 1,000 devices, available in a limited-edition “sediment” color, will cost $1,000 and begin shipping in the spring. After that, the company says its price will drop to $600 at an unannounced date.

 

Madden NFL 23 developer EA Sports says it will remove CPR touchdown celebrations from the game in light of Damar Hamlin’s recent light-threatening injury. Hamlin, a second-year safety with the Buffalo Bills, suffered an on-the-field cardiac arrest on January 2nd during a Monday Night Football match between the Bills and Cincinnati Bengals. Following a routine tackle of Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins, Hamlin collapsed to the ground. The incident saw the Bills’ medical team administer CPR to Hamlin, and an ambulance eventually transport him off the field to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center for critical care.

“EA Sports is taking steps to remove the celebration from Madden NFL 23 via an update in the coming days,” a spokesperson for the studio told CBS Sports. Incidentally, the announcement comes just days after Pittsburg Steelers linebacker Alex Highsmith took part in a CPR celebration during his team’s Sunday win against the Cleveland Browns. The incident raised more than a few eyebrows on social media. “I just don’t want people to think of me that way and think I was doing anything,” Highsmith said after the game, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Because I would never, ever, ever, ever want to do that intentionally, and I never ever would do that.” On Tuesday, Hamlin shared an update on his recovery, posting on Twitter that he was at Buffalo General Hospital and completing a series of tests to ensure his heart is okay.

 

Yet more video game veterans are forming a new studio after leaving an industry heavyweight. Key leaders from Forza Horizon creator Playground Games have established Maverick Games, a Leamington Spak, UK development house devoted to ‘AAA’ titles. Gamesindustry.biznotes the studio is headed by former Horizon creative director Mike Brown, while executive producer Tom Butcher, technical chief Matt Craven, content director Gareth Harwood and audio lead Fraser Strachan.

The 10-person team’s art director is Ben Penrose, who most recently worked at Vampire the Masquerade: Blood Hunt developer Sharkmob but also has experience at Playground. Former EA experience director Elly Marshall is in charge of experience and interface development. Sega and Sumo veteran Harinder Sangha is the operations chief.

Maverick hasn’t shared much about its first project, but does say it will be an open-world title for consoles and PCs. Brown suggests the game will be a response to how people entertain themselves in the modern era — think subscription services and TikTok. That means games that are continuously involving without being repetitive, Brown explains.

As with similar launches, Maverick is hoping to veer away from ‘safe’ projects. Brown tells GI.biz he wants to encourage “creative risks,” but also wants to keep out “toxic” egos that can damage the team. Sangha hopes the company can help improve diversity in the game industry. This is about shaking up the existing formula which, while reliable, doesn’t allow for much variety.

Brown and Sangha stressed that they left their respective former employers on good terms. However, they and Maverick are part of a broader trend of high-profile game devs going independent after dealing with creative frustration (or simply boredom) at major studios. Simply speaking, big-name brands can’t assume their top talent will stick around.

 

Like going to the store to buy dog food and coming back with a duck, researchers with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory may have uncovered a significant insight into how masers (nature’s lasers) are formed while conducting a routine study of the “oddball” star MWC 349A using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). It came in the form of a previously unseen jet of ejected material being launched away from the star at “impossibly high speeds,” according to the NRAO.

MWC 349A, which resides 3,900 light years away from us in the Cygnus constellation, earned its oddball moniker by being 30 times larger than our own star as well as one of the brightest radio sources in the sky. It’s also one of the only observed celestial objects that’s known to have a hydrogen maser. Those are as cool as they sound, being radio wavelength analogs to lasers that emit powerful, narrow beams of radiation instead of coherent light. Naturally occurring masers are valuable research tools as they amplify radio wave emissions which enables researchers to study processes that are too far or obscured to observe visually — think star-sized bullhorns in space.   

“A maser is like a naturally occurring laser,” Sirina Prasad, primary author of the study and an undergraduate research assistant at the Center for Astrophysics, said in a release Monday. “It’s an area in outer space that emits a really bright kind of light. We can see this light and trace it back to where it came from, bringing us one step closer to figuring out what’s really going on.”  

The scientific community has been aware of MWC 349’s existence since 1989 when they observed that it had, “some of the characteristics of a molecular maser source: It was extremely bright, and it varied in time, the result of sensitivity to changes in the detailed excitation processes,” Ignacio Diaz Bobillo at the Center for Astrophysics wrote in 2013.  

He notes that the maser source offered three valuable features: 

The first is that the excited atoms produced a series of masers at a series of wavelengths from the corresponding set of hydrogen lines – some even at wavelengths short enough to be trumpeted as being natural lasers. The second is that the numerous lines allowed scientists to model the emitting region in detail. It is an edge-on disk rotating in so-called Keplerian fashion, that is, like the planets orbit in the solar system with those near the Sun orbiting faster than those far from the Sun (very different from the rotation of a solid disk). The final, mysterious point was that this first hydrogen maser source seemed to be unique.

No one understands why, but despite decades of searching for other hydrogen maser sources, only two other possible examples have been proposed, though they remain uncertain at best.

“Our previous understanding of MWC 349A was that the star was surrounded by a rotating disk and photo-evaporating wind,” Prasad continued. “Strong evidence for an additional collimated jet had not yet been seen in this system.” But that is what they stumbled upon this time around.

The collimated jet is streaking away from the star and its gas disk at a blistering 500km/s — at those speeds you can get from San Diego, California to Phoenix, Arizona faster than you can say “please, no, anywhere but Phoenix.” Literally. Prasad’s team believes that the material is accelerating to such high speeds with the help of the star’s immensely powerful magnetic field which is generating powerful magnetohydrodynamic winds.

“Although we don’t yet know for certain where it comes from or how it is made, it could be that a magnetohydrodynamic wind is producing the jet, in which case the magnetic field is responsible for launching rotating material from the system,” Prasad noted. “This could help us to better understand the disk-wind dynamics of MWC 349A, and the interplay between circumstellar disks, winds, and jets in other star systems.”

 

Five years after debuting at CES 2018, Hyundai’s e-Corner technology is closer to reality. Following its most recent appearance at CES 2021, the system was on display at last week’s show. And this time around, rather than building a dedicated prototype to showcase the tech, the automaker’s Mobis arm instead integrated e-Corner into an Ioniq 5 EV.

As you can see from the video the Hyundai shared (via Autoblog), the module, much like the Hummer EV’s “CrabWalk” functionality, allows a car’s wheels to turn in ways they can’t in a vehicle with a traditional suspension system. Subsequently, that allows you to complete maneuvers you can’t in other vehicles. Parallel parking, for instance, is as easy as turning the wheels 90 degrees and driving the car horizontally. Less practical but just as cool, e-Corner also enables cars to move diagonally and rotate on the spot. It’s even possible to pull off a pivot turn.

It will likely be another few years before e-Corner modules start showing up in production vehicles. In 2021, Hyundai Mobis said it was planning to begin rolling out the technology in 2025. That said, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other automakers incorporate the technology into their cars since the division produces parts for other companies, not just Hyundai.

 

If you’re looking for a game to play right now and you have a Netflix subscription, it’s worth checking out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. It just hit iOS and Android mobile as a mobile exclusive for Netflix members.

Shredder’s Revenge brings classic TMNT side-scrolling beat-‘em-ups like Turtles in Time bang up to date. Not only does it have gorgeous pixel art, but you can hurl enemies at the screen like in the old days. As soon as the mobile version dropped, I downloaded it and, within 30 seconds, I had joined a party of five other people to dish out swift justice to Bebop, Rocksteady and the Foot Clan. Along with the turtles, April O’Neil, Master Splinter and Casey Jones are playable characters

The game ran without a hitch on my iPhone 12 in the couple of levels I played. The touch controls work well enough, but I don’t think I’d want to play the entire thing that way. An external controller is a better option if you have one handy. In any case, Shredder’s Revenge was one of my favorite games of 2022. I love the idea of being able to play it anywhere without lugging my Steam Deck or Switch around.

Netflix recently addedKentucky Route Zero and Twelve Minutes to its growing and impressive lineup of mobile games. In the coming months, Vikings: Valhalla and Valiant Hearts: Coming Home will be available on the service.

 

Meta is taking more steps to limit potentially harmful ad campaigns. The company is placing more restrictions on advertisers’ ability to target teens. From February onward, Facebook and Instagram will no longer let marketers aim ads at teens based on gender — only age and location. Follows and likes on the social networks also won’t influence the ads teens see.

In March, Meta will expand the ad preferences in Facebook and Instagram to let teens see fewer sales pitches for a given topic. Teens could already hide the ads from specific advertisers, but this gives them the choice of automatically downplaying whole categories like TV dramas or footwear.

The social media giant has put ever-tighter restrictions on the content teens can access. In 2021, Facebook and Instagram barred advertisers from using teens’ interests to target ads. Instagram also made accounts private by default for teens under 16, and this year limited sensitive content for all new teen users. Meta has likewise limited the ability of “suspicious” adults to message teens on both platforms.

This is the second major ad policy change in a week. Just a day before, Meta rolled out an AI-based system meant to reduce discriminatory ad distribution. The technology is launching as part of a settlement with the federal government over charges that Facebook let companies target ads based on ethnicity, gender and other protected classes.

As with those earlier efforts, Meta has a strong incentive to act. The attorneys general of 10 states are investigating Instagram’s effects on teens, while the European Union recently fined Meta the equivalent of $402 million for allegedly mishandling privacy settings for younger users. Governments are concerned that Meta might be exploiting teens’ usage habits or exposing them to threats, including content that could lead to mental health issues. The new protections won’t solve these problems by themselves, but they might show officials that Meta is serious about curbing ads that prey on teens.

 

NASA is still willing to fund unusual concepts in its bid to advance space exploration. The agency is handing out $175,000 initial study grants to 14 projects that could be useful for missions in and beyond the Solar System. The highlight may be TitanAir, a seaplane from Planet Enterprises’ Quinn Morley that could both fly through the nitrogen-and-methane atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan and sail its oceans. The “flying boat” would collect methane and complex organic material for study by sucking it in through a porous leading edge.

A project from UCLA’s Artur Davoyan, meanwhile, could speed up missions to the outer edge of the Solar System and even interstellar space. His design (shown at middle) would propel spacecraft by producing a “pellet-beam” of microscopic particles travelling at very high speed (over 74 miles per second) using laser blasts. The concept could dramatically shorten the time it takes to explore deep space. Where Voyager 1 took 35 years to reach interstellar space (the heliopause, roughly 123AU from the Sun), a one-ton spacecraft could reach 100AU in just three years. It could travel 500AU in 15 years.

Other efforts are sometimes similarly ambitious. MIT’s Mary Knapp has proposed a deep space observatory that would use a swarm of thousands of tiny satellites to detect low-frequency radio emissions from the early universe, not to mention the magnetic fields of Earth-like exoplanets. Congrui Jin from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln has envisioned self-growing habitat building blocks that could save space on missions to Mars, while Lunar Resources’ Peter Curreri has devised pipelines that could shuttle oxygen between Moon bases.

These are all very early initiatives that aren’t guaranteed to lead to real-world tests, let alone missions. However, they illustrate NASA’s thinking. The administration is funding the projects now in hopes that at least one will eventually pay off. If there’s even partial success, NASA could make discoveries that aren’t practical using existing technology.