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A year ago, Meta was riding high on the metaverse. The company had just completed its rebranding from Facebook to Meta. Social networks, as Mark Zuckerberg explained, were no longer a singular focus for the company. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first,” he said.

Now, as Meta finishes its first full year as a “metaverse company,” the outlook is considerably less rosy. The company has lost billions of dollars on Reality Labs, the division overseeing its metaverse work. Its stock has cratered. The company has, for the first time, shed thousands of employees in mass layoffs. Even longtime shareholders are starting to do what was once unthinkable: question Zuckerberg’s vision for the future.

At the same time, Meta still hasn’t clearly articulated what the metaverse is or effectively made the case for why the billions of people currently using its social media apps would want to be part of an “embodied internet.” Worse still, the company’s initial metaverse product has proved underwhelming, and turned the metaverse into a punchline, rather than a source of anticipation.

We still don’t know what the metaverse is for

Meta and Zuckerberg have offered various definitions over the last year. The metaverse is the “successor to the mobile internet,” and “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience.” It’s virtual reality, but also (eventually) augmented reality. It will also, somehow, tie into our existing social graphs on Facebook and Instagram. But, unlike Facebook and Instagram, it will be interoperable with other companies’ platforms. It might have something to do with NFTs and web3.

“The defining characteristic of the metaverse is that you really feel like you’re present with other people or in another place,” Zuckerberg said during an interview at SXSW in February. “You might look at documents, you might look at a website but in the future you’re going to be in it.”

Zuckerberg might think this is explaining the beginnings of some grand vision for a future internet, but it also just sounds a lot like plain old virtual reality. Moreover, it’s telling that one of his go-to examples is “looking at documents.” Over the last year, the company has leaned hard into Horizon Workrooms, its social VR experience geared toward office workers.

When the company showed off its new high-end Quest Pro, it offered up Horizon Workrooms as one of the key experiences optimized for the new headset. You can now recreate a whole virtual workspace in VR. Soon, you’ll be able to use a slew of office and productivity software, from Zoom to Microsoft Word.

But the idea of working in VR with a headset strapped to your face is still pretty far from appealing to most people. And there are a vanishingly small number of jobs and industries where working in VR is even remotely justified.

Perhaps what’s most telling is that Meta has apparently struggled to persuade its own employees to use Workrooms. Despite making Quest 2 headsets free to all employees last year, a recent push from Zuckerberg for teams to start holding meetings in VR revealed that many either hadn’t taken advantage of the offer or hadn’t set the headset up, The New York Timesreported.

Meta’s metaverse is a meme for bad graphics

Without a clear vision, it became far too easy for Meta’s critics to seize on aesthetic issues and other problems. For now, the closest thing Meta has to the “metaverse” is Horizon Worlds, its social VR playground where users are free to explore as their avatar. But the experience of actually using it is far different than the polished videos and demos Meta has shared.

This was never more apparent than when Zuckerberg earnestly posted a screenshot of his avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower and Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia to mark Horizon World’s launch in France and Spain. The screenshot was hilariously bad and quickly took on a life of its own as people mocked the “1995 level graphics.”

Zuckerberg quickly promised new and improved avatars, and showed off a more realistic likeness of himself, saying that “graphics in Horizon are capable of much more.” (A post on LinkedIn, which has since been deleted, later revealed that the “improved” Zuck avatar took about a month and “40 iterations” to complete.)

Then, at the company’s Connect event, Zuckerberg promised an even bigger advancement: legs. Soon, Horizon’s cartoonish, legless avatars would be replaced with ones resembling actual, walking humans. We watched as Zuckerberg’s “full body” avatar casually strolled around Horizon Worlds. But while it was first thought to be a turning point — adding leg tracking to VR has been a notoriously tricky problem — it turned out this particular demo was more stagecraft than actual innovation. The company later confirmed that the demo was created with motion capture and wasn’t live VR.

Meta still says that its avatars will eventually have legs, but it’s not clear when, or if the feature will even look like the demo.

The metaverse is a money pit

It’s impossible to ignore that Zuckerberg’s metaverse pivot has also coincided with the company’s worst financial performance in recent memory. Meta’s revenue has shrunk for two straight quarters for the first time ever. Its stock has lost more than 60 percent of its value this year, wiping out billions of dollars.

To be fair, the metaverse isn’t entirely to blame. Apple’s anti-tracking changes in iOS have hurt the company’s advertising business. And the entire industry is reeling from an economic downturn that’s affected even the largest tech giants.

At the same time, Meta is undeniably losing vast amounts of money on its metaverse investments. Reality Labs lost $10 billion in 2021, and 2022’s losses already amounted to $9 billion by the third quarter. Those losses are expected to “grow significantly” in 2023, according to the company’s CFO.

It’s no surprise, then, that Meta’s investors are starting to question whether all this metaverse stuff is really worth it. The CEO of Altimeter Capital, a longtime Meta shareholder, made headlines when he wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year that called the company’s metaverse investments “super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

In the company’s most recent earnings call, where Zuckerberg more often fields peppy questions about the company’s ad business, one analyst also raised the issue of “experimental bets versus proven bets.”

“I think everyone wants to hear why you think this pays off,” he asked. Zuckerberg, who seemed a bit flustered by the question, replied that “the metaverse work is a longer term set of efforts that we’re working on, but I think that it’s going to end up working.” Patience, he said, will be rewarded.

 

Earlier this year, Alienware released what’s arguably the best all-around gaming monitor on the market right now: the AW3423DW. But last week, LG quietly announced its latest batch of UltraGear gaming monitors and after getting a chance to check them out in person, I can say that Alienware’s display has some formidable new rivals.

Unlike the AW3423DW, LG’s monitors are available in two sizes intended for slightly different use cases. There’s the 27-inch 27GR95QE-B, which sports a flat panel with 2,560 x 1,440 resolution meant for both general use and more demanding competitive play, while the 45-inch 45GR95QE-B packs a curved display with 800R radius and 3,440 x 1,440 resolution designed to deliver a more immersive experience.

Like its bigger sibling, the 27-inch 27GR95QE-B sports a blazing 240Hz refresh rate, but with a smaller non-curved OLED panel.

The nice thing about these monitors is that regardless of which one you pick, both feature 240Hz refresh rates – the highest you can get from any OLED monitor available today. On top of that, both models have incredibly fast response times of just 0.3 ms (gray to gray). What’s more, they each support both AMD FreeSync Premium and Nvidia G-Sync while also outputting a dazzling range of colors (up to 98.5 percent of the DCI-P3 spectrum). In short, LG’s new UltraGear displays deliver a laundry list of premium display tech with one clear downside: a relatively low max brightness of just 200 nits.

Admittedly, low brightness might not be a big deal if, like many people, you prefer gaming in dark environments – especially since you’ll probably want to turn the lights down anyway to make the most of LG’s built-in RGB light strips. You can even sync the LEDs on the back to what’s being displayed on screen, which adds a bit of bias lighting without the need for additional hardware. Another small bonus of having a lower max brightness is that there’s no need for an ABL (auto brightness limiter) setting like you see on some other OLED monitors, so you don’t have to worry about the display randomly getting dimmer when looking at primarily white screens (like when you’re viewing word docs or spreadsheets).

The 800R curve on the 45GR95QE-B is even more rounded than many of its rivals and delivers an almost cocoon-like gaming experience. 

Unfortunately, because of the size of the displays – particularly the huge 45-inch model – text doesn’t look quite as sharp as I’d like. When you’re gaming that’s not an issue, but when I browsed the web, I could see color fringing and a bit of general blurriness when reading stories and headlines. Now, it’s important to mention that color fringing is something that can be seen on a handful of new OLED displays (most notably QD-OLED panels due to their triangular sub-pixel arrangement), and it’s possible that tools like Better ClearType or an update to Microsoft’s own Clear Type feature could address this issue. But unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to test that out during my brief hands-on.

To test its new UltraGear gaming monitors, LG flew in pro Valorant players Com (pictured here) and Jawgemo from Evil Geniuses.

That said, while the new UltraGear monitors may not be the best all-around displays for both productivity and entertainment, they look stunning in gaming scenarios. The 27GR95QE-B is the more approachable of the two as it only costs $1,000 (versus $1,700 for the 27GR95QE) and has a better chance of actually fitting on your desk – at least without you needing to rearrange everything. At 27 inches, it’s also closer in size to what pro gamers use in tournaments (most competitions feature 24-inch monitors), while support for tilt, swivel, height and even portrait adjustments make it super easy to position the display properly.

But the best thing is just how good everything looks in motion. LG brought in some pro Valorant gamers from Evil Geniuses to show off the new UltraGears and even in the midst of a firefight everything stayed tack sharp which brings me to the monitors’ most important spec: their 240Hz refresh rates. Previously, the highest you could get on an OLED monitor (including premium rivals like the Alienware AW3423DW and Samsung Odyssey OLED G8) was 175Hz.

If you can ignore the moire pattern from my camera, you’ll notice some color fringing or rainbow outlines around some of the text. The issue may be caused by an issue with the ClearType feature in Windows, so there’s a chance Microsoft may be able to address it in the future. 

For people still using 60Hz displays, that gap might not sound like a big deal. However, the issue is that the general rule when it comes to monitors is that you typically only notice a difference in perceivable performance when you double the refresh rate (e.g., from 60Hz to 120Hz or 120Hz to 240Hz) That means anyone upgrading from a 120Hz displays to one of Alienware’s or Samsung’s rivals might not notice a big improvement while still having a panel that can’t quite hit the super high frame rates (typically from 240 to 300 fps or more) that competitive gamers prefer. But with LG’s latest UltraGears, you get the deep blacks and rich vibrant colors that OLED displays are known for and a refresh rate that rivals all but the very fastest LCD screens.

As for the larger and more expensive 45GR95QE-B, while it has a slightly lower pixel density than its smaller sibling, its curved panel delivers an encompassing experience. Its 800R radius is meant to mimic the natural shape of your eye while wrapping around you even more than more typical 1000R curved displays. The sweet spot for the monitor is about two and a half feet from the screen and it’s basically perfect. You can still see from edge to edge so you get that glorious panoramic view, but it’s not so expansive that you need to constantly move your head to spot buttons or icons that might live in the corners. Interestingly, when I asked EG Com if the 800R curve messed up his aim when compared to a flat display, he said even though it was his first time using this monitor he didn’t have to adjust much at all.

LG’s latest gaming monitors even feature a dedicated dashboard for quickly adjusting image settings or viewing things like the display’s refresh rate. 

Aside from the new panels themselves, there are a couple of other design tweaks I want to call out. The first is that to better cater to competitive gamers, LG is using new feet on the UltraGears’ stands so you can position your keyboard closer to the monitor. But to me, the bigger upgrade is the inclusion of a dedicated remote for adjusting image settings. Instead of having to fumble around with hidden buttons or a joystick on the back of the monitor, you can just sit back and enjoy a more TV-like experience. The addition of a remote is something we’ve seen from other flagship monitors like Samsung’s Odyssey Ark and it’s a trend I’m really hoping to see trickle down to more mainstream displays across the market.

Instead of relying on hidden buttons or a joystick, for its latest UltraGear gaming monitors LG created a new dedicated remote for adjusting image settings. 

So while LG’s new UltraGear monitors don’t have the best brightness, they’ve got pretty much every other high-end feature you could want on a gaming monitor right now. And with the 27-inch model going for $1,000 while the bigger 45-inch version going for $1,700, LG suddenly has some very interesting alternatives (both smaller and larger) to Alienware’s fantastic QD-OLED display.

 

We’re not that far away from CES, where we should expect new chip announcements from Intel and AMD. That’s normally followed by a raft of Windows 11 laptop announcements that use the new silicon, but Lenovo has decided to get its news out of the door well ahead of time. Unfortunately, that means there’s some vague references to next-generation chips from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA. But you can probably guess when those details will be filled in, and what they’ll likely represent.

Of the many machines Lenovo has announced today, only a handful are coming to the US, such as the IdeaPad Pro 5 and 5i. This is coming in 14- and 16-inch variants, both of which will only come with Intel’s “next-gen” Core i5 and i7 options, with the option of a 14-inch 2.2k display or a 2.8k 120Hz screen, while the 16-inch comes with a 2.5K 120Hz model by default. Lenovo adds that you can expect “enhanced performance” thanks to better thermals, allowing for a cooler and quieter experience overall. Other tweaks for these machines include a 25 percent larger touchpad, a new FHD IR webcam with a Time of Flight sensor and, for the 16-inch model, an SSD expandable storage slot.

As for the IdeaPad Slim, you’ll be able to pick up the Slim 5i with a 16-inch display, packing Intel’s as-yet unnamed processor. You’ll also be able to snag a 16-inch Slim 5 with options for AMD’s Ryzen 3 (7330U), 5 (7530U) or 7 (7730U) processor, although you’re stuck with a 60Hz display no matter which option you go for. With one eye on privacy, these new models get a physical shutter on the webcam. The only other major change is the greater choice in paint jobs, since you’ll now be able to grab them in Violet, Cloud Grey and Abyss Blue.

In terms of availability, Lenovo is saying that these models won’t reach the US until May 2023, with prices for the 16-inch 5i starting at $1,500. The Slim 5, meanwhile, will start at $650 for the AMD edition, while the Intel-toting 5i is priced at $750.

 

Lenovo has launched the IdeaPad Flex 3i 2-in-1 Chromebook with improved features over last year’s Flex 3i Chromebook, along with a higher price tag. The 16:10 12.2-inch display is an inch larger than before, and it can be used as a laptop, tablet or made to stand in tent-mode for entertainment. It also comes with thinner bezels and looks a fair bit less chunky than the previous model. Performance-wise, it offers the latest N-series Intel processors (the N100 or N200), up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Other features include an optional Full HD webcam with a physical shutter and designated mute key, along with faster connectivity via WiFi 6E. It offers up to 12 hours of battery life, an optional backlit keyboard, tuned speakers and a drop-hinge feature that lifts the keyboard for a more ergonomic typing experience. It’s shipping in May 2023 starting at $350, a fair chunk more than the $190 price on the current Flex 3i.

If it’s an Android tablet you’re after, Lenovo also took the wraps off the Tab M9 ahead CES 2023. It’s essentially designed as an entertainment unit, with a 9-inch “Netflix HD-supported” 1,920 x 1,200 display, Dolby Atmos spatial audio support and dual stereo speakers. If you’re more into books, it also offers an immersive reading mode that simulates the color of real book pages, lets you soften the tone for your eyes, and choose from various ambient background sounds. 

It comes with a MediaTek Helio G80 Octa-Core processor, Android 12 OS, up to 128GB of storage, 13 hours of battery life, face unlocking and WiFi 5 connectivity. It arrives in Q2 2023 for $140, though it’ll cost more with the optional folio case shown above. 

 

We may not have had quite as much unfettered reading time as we did in the lockdown days of the COVID pandemic, but Engadget’s editors have still managed to pick out, peruse and ponder a broad variety of this year’s most intriguing books. Whether we learned how to wield a wok, listened to life lessons from Hideo Kojima, or dove into the seedy underbelly of an alt-universe 1940’s San Francisco, here are a few of our favorites from 2022.

Razzmatazz by Christopher Moore

Classic noir cinema was a staple in my house growing up — I mean, my first celebrity crush was on The Thin Man series co-star, Myrna Loy — so any story from the days when mugs were mooks and gals were dames holds sway over my heart. But The Thin Man, like the rest of the media made at that time, only showed a very narrow, very male, very white view of life. Christopher Moore’s latest novel, Razzmatazz, adds some much needed color to the otherwise black-and-white world of noir.

Razzmatazz is the second title for Moore’s satirical murder mystery series, following 2019’s Noir. In this latest installment, we’re returned to Post-WWII San Francisco as bartender Sammy “Two Toes” Tiffin and his cadre of misfit friends hustle to survive in Fog City. Now, helping disappear your best friend’s girlfriend’s abusive husband is one thing but, as the team soon learns, stealing back a possibly magical, definitely priceless, heirloom from the local Tong is another entirely — and that’s before some madman starts murdering the city’s drag kings.

Razzmatazz is a smart and just a bit snarky adventure mystery featuring a diverse and developed cast of characters, fast-paced action that seamlessly transitions between the varying viewpoints of said ensemble and doesn’t get bogged down in world building. At around 350 pages apiece, Noir and Razzmatazz will each provide a solid weekend’s entertainment and, if you’re still looking for more Moore after that, check out 2020’s Shakespeare for Squirrels. – Andrew Tarantola, Senior Editor

Upgrade by Blake Crouch

I always look forward to new Blake Crouch releases because his writing is vivid and fast-paced, so much so that I can see the movie version playing out in my head as I devour his latest title in just a couple of days. This year’s Upgrade was no exception – we’re in a world in which gene editing is real yet highly regulated, and we follow Logan Ramsay, a member of the Gene Protection Agency as he tries to apprehend those who may be involved in nefarious gene-editing activities.

But after a violent encounter on a mission, Logan starts to feel less and less like himself and more like a better version of himself. He can read faster, he’s physically stronger and he needs less sleep. He soon finds out his genome has been hacked, and he also discovers he’s part of a much larger plan that could change humanity as he knows it. As he works to stop this plan from being executed, he’s forced to confront some of the darkest parts of his past and the tarnished family legacy he’s been working so hard to escape.

Crouch excels at putting readers into his protagonist’s shoes, forcing them to feel the same anxiety, dread and confusion inflicting his main characters. But to think that produces an overall unpleasant reading experience would be incorrect: Upgrade is an intriguing thrill ride that moves at break-neck speed, while posing a lot of questions about humanity as a whole. – Valentina Palladino, Senior Commerce Editor

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

On its face, Notes on an Execution may seem like a typical examination of a serial killer. The novel begins with Ansel Packer counting down his last 12 hours before he’s to be executed for killing many women. But Danya Kukafka is much less interested in this murderer as she is in telling the stories of three women who were all affected by Ansel in some way. We follow Lavender, Ansel’s mother, as a lost teenager pushed to the brink as she struggles to protect her children and herself; Hazel, Ansel’s sister-in-law who watches her twin lose herself in this toxic relationship; and Saffy, the lead investigator on Ansel’s case with more hidden trauma than you might expect buried just under the surface. But these women aren’t victims with a capital V. Instead, they work to flip the serial-killer narrative on its head by focusing our attention on the fact that, despite everything, they survived. Notes on an Execution is a dark, engaging story with lovely prose and a surprisingly, underlying element of hope at the end of it all. – V.P.

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Our Missing Hearts, in the grand tradition of near-future dystopian fiction like The Handmaid’s Tale or 1984, presents a vision of our country that feels far too close for comfort. In Ng’s third novel, she writes of a 12-year-old boy named Bird and his father, who live in a United States where laws enshrining America-first culture have been put in place following years of economic and social turmoil.

In this world, Asians have been made the scapegoat for all of America’s ills; while Asian Americans are still technically free and full citizens, many of them are under the thumb of police and subject to various degrees of violence from so-called “real” Americans. And any parents deemed to be un-America could have their children immediately confiscated – no questions asked. As in any good dystopia, books deemed unpatriotic have also been seized and destroyed, including a book of poetry by Bird’s mother, a woman who disappeared years earlier.

This story is simultaneously small and universal. The meat of the narrative focuses on Bird pushing to learn more about his mother and the circumstances of the world he’s living in, and there are only a handful of major characters. At the same time, Ng skillfully paints a plausible picture of an America that’s given in to its worst instincts. Ng has pointed out multiple times that all the atrocities being committed in Our Missing Hearts are things that have taken place in the US or other parts of the world already – not a comforting thought.

But as bleak as this world is, the book is filled with moments of unexpected beauty and small triumphs. Perhaps most crucially, there’s a sense that while an extremist minority currently may rule over a more sensible populace, there’s a way out of the darkness. Our Missing Hearts isn’t a light story, but it’s an important one, artfully told by a writer who can deftly weave together a compelling narrative with poignant social commentary. Ng may have made a big impact in popular culture with Little Fires Everywhere (and its accompanying Hulu miniseries), but Our Missing Hearts feels like her definitive work thus far. – Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor

The Creative Gene by Hideo Kojima

Hideo Kojima is a video game designer best known for the Metal Gear series, which popularized the stealth genre and had a plot that could charitably be described as ridiculous. Perhaps shamefully, I am a Kojima fan. His studios’ games are often in dire need of an editor and almost constantly tow the line between insight and navel-gazing. Sometimes, they’ve also seemed incapable of treating their female characters with respect. But they are always bursting with ideas, trying things with an unmistakable voice and a ceaseless, pulverizing earnestness. His post-apocalyptic delivery sim Death Stranding is at once laughably on-the-nose (one hard-to-kill character is called “Die-Hardman” AKA: John McClane, of course), and one the most enchanting games I’ve played in the past decade.

I give you this background to help explain how I ended up reading Kojima’s book, The Creative Gene, earlier this year. (It was technically published in late 2021.) Instead of telling some weirdo techno-thriller or a behind-the-scenes look at game development, though, this is a collection of previously published essays about the books, movies and other cultural objects that Kojima finds essential to his being. Like his games, it can border on hokey and self-mythologizing, but it is disarmingly honest, personal and anti-cynical.

In many ways, the Metal Gear games are about identity – who we are and how we got there. That’s more or less what Kojima gets at here; for about 250 pages, he raves about things he likes with a tangible verve, not to recommend them to consumers, but to explore how they’ve shaped his experience. More than a memoir, though, The Creative Gene is an appreciation of how art of all stripes can spark inspiration in a recyclable process.

The prose is nothing extraordinary, and there are certainly more essential subjects out there. While you don’t need to be a gamer to get something out of this, having a familiarity with Kojima’s work doesn’t hurt. Still, The Creative Gene’s sincerity and enthusiasm are easy to appreciate in a time of widespread detachment. – Jeff Dunn, Senior Commerce Writer

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel delivered one of the essential reads of the pandemic when she published The Glass Hotel in March 2020. It was no small feat given she previously wrote the award-winning Station Eleven, a novel that’s set partly after a world-ending flu. Given that there was a five-year gap between Station Eleven and Glass Hotel, I didn’t dare hope one of my favorite authors would release a new novel so soon, and that it would be as good as her previous works. Thankfully, Sea of Tranquility does not disappoint.

It shares many of the same strengths as Mandel’s past novels, including a brilliant sense of atmosphere and prose that rewards close reading. Sea of Tranquility is also in conversation with Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel in a way that will delight fans. That’s not to say you need to have read those books to enjoy her latest, but it may make you look at them (and Mandel’s career) in a new light. Add to that themes that will resonate with anyone who has lived through the past two years and you have one of the best books of 2022. – Igor Bonifacic, Weekend Editor

 

CES 2023 usually features some pretty eccentric gadgets, and Lenovo is kicking off that trend with the Go Desk Station with Webcam. It’s designed for those of us with limited desk space, serving as a webcam, adjustable desk light, Qi wireless charger and expansion hub all in one. It doesn’t compromise on any of those things, but is priced accordingly.

The primary feature is the Lenovo Go 4K Pro Webcam (also available as a standalone camera) designed for video conferencing and high-res streaming. It can stream 4K at up to 30 fps and includes autofocus and auto-framing with an adjustable field of view, along with auto ambient light adjustment, via the built-in desk light.

That desk light rides on a height-adjustable and rotating arm, and can be positioned in almost any direction to illuminate your face or objects on your desk. You can choose from three color temperature options to match your environment, including 3,000K (yellow white), 4,500K (cool white) and 6,500K (daylight), with brightness up to 1600 lux at 0.5 meters (1.5 feet). 

It’s a versatile hub, as well. It has a 135-watt USB-C power input with a full-function 65-watt USB-C port for laptop power, to start with. It also includes 15-watt Qi compliant charging pad for mobile devices, a 20W USB Type-C port, two USB Type-A 3.1 ports and an HDMI 2.0 output for external displays up to 4K at 60fps.  

If you’re already looking for a desk lamp, wireless charger and USB hub, this could fit the bill in just a single purchase. You’ll pay for it though. The Go Desk Station with Webcam arrives in March 2023 starting at $329, or you can grab the Lenovo Go 4K Pro webcam by itself for $150, also in March next year. 

 

The algorithm that powers TikTok’s “For You” page has long been a source of fascination and suspicion. Fans often remark on the app’s eerie accuracy, while TikTok critics have at times speculated the company could subtly manipulate its algorithm to influence its users in more nefarious ways.

Now, the company is taking new steps to demystify some aspects of its algorithm. The app is introducing a feature that will “help people understand why a particular video has been recommended to them.” With the update, users will be able to tap on a new question mark icon, which will list some factors that played a role in the recommendation.

In a blog post, the company notes that its “recommendation system is powered by technical models” and the feature is meant to make “technical details more easily understandable.” For now, that also means the details shared sound a bit vague. For example, “this video is popular in the United States,” and “you are following Hanna” are two of the explanations provided by Tiktok. Other explanations may be based on “user interactions, such as content you watch, like or share, comments you post, or searches.”

The company says it plans to add “more granularity and transparency” to the feature over time, though, so the explanations could eventually get more detailed. A TikTok spokesperson said that future versions may also incorporate other factors that influence the app’s algorithm, like an individual’s account settings.

While the feature will likely not do much to assuage critics who think TikTok, or parent company ByteDance, uses the algorithm to manipulate users, it could help make its recommendations a bit more understandable to its users. And the change is part of a broader move from TikTok to prove it’s willing to be more transparent about the inner workings of its app. The company has also partnered with Oracle to conduct a review of its algorithms and content moderation system.

 

While acknowledging that 2022 was “harder than we expected” for its metaverse plans, Meta remains committed to the technology, Reality Labs CTO Andrew Bosworth wrote in a blog post. To that end, the company is planning to put 20 percent of its total spending toward Reality Labs in 2023, with half of that going directly toward augmented reality (AR) initiatives — around the same amount as last year. 

Meta was criticized this year for putting billions toward metaverse projects and seeing a loss of $9.4 billion from Reality Labs through the first three-quarters of 2022. “Economic challenges across the world, combined with pressures on Meta’s core business, created a perfect storm of skepticism about the investments we’re making,” Bosworth acknowledged.

However, reversing course now could produce “disastrous consequences,” he added. Noting that daily active Facebook users (DAUs) were at an all-time high, the 20 percent investment in Reality Labs “makes sense for a company committed to staying at the leading edge” of AR tech. 

While Reality Labs is losing money, the spending enabled Meta to develop “foundational pieces of technology” for the future, Bosworth said. Specifically, Meta shipped the Quest Pro headset with mixed reality and eye and face tracking that have been adopted by developers, creators and builders. “We’ll be living with the benefits of this work for decades to come.”

It looks like Meta and its investors will need to stay patient, though, as the company’s vision for immersive AR glasses is years off. “Our vision for true AR glasses will require years of progress making our devices slimmer, lighter, faster, and more powerful, all while consuming way less battery power and generating much less heat,” according to Bosworth.

In the shorter term, Reality Labs is working to improve its incredibly basic avatar system, with more news coming in 2023. It’s also planning to help Horizon Worlds “flourish,” will introduce a Meta Question Gaming Showcase in the spring and reveal the “successor to the Meta Quest 2” sometime next year. 

Virtual reality pioneer John Carmack recently left Meta, while criticizing the company’s lack of efficiency. Bosworth also acknowledged the likely arrival of Apple’s AR headset and HTC’s Meta Quest rival likely coming in 2023 Given all that, Meta likely wanted to assure users and investors alike that the company is staying the course on AR, despite the challenges.

 

Dyson’s Zone is a headset-visor that processes the air you breathe and pumps it, well, into your face. Now we know the price ($949!) and launch date (March 2023), the company invited press to strap the baffling device on and test it a little more extensively.

In a dark blue with copper accents, it looks a little subtler than the press images. But it’s still going to turn heads. The Dyson Zone is not designed to protect against COVID-19 or other viruses, as it does not seal to your face. The air purifier filters have a dual-layer design with potassium-enriched carbon to capture acidic gasses. The company claims the filters will block 99 percent of particles, including those as small as 0.1 microns for “filtering city fumes and pollutants.” However, you can use inserts like an N95 mask attachment – also offered by Dyson.

You can check out Engadget’s Cherlynn Low wearing the Dyson Zone around New York.

– Mat Smith

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Apple’s 11-inch iPad Pro M2 drops to a new all-time low of $699

Epic Games will pay $520 million to settle FTC’s ‘Fortnite’ case

The year organized labor finally took root in big tech

Our favorite gadget purchases of 2022

Kia’s EV6 GT crams performance into a great EV

Elon Musk will find someone else to run Twitter, according to his poll

He asked users if he should step down, and they decisively voted yes.

Elon Musk put his own leadership of Twitter on the line at the weekend. “Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll,” he tweeted. The poll ended and 57.5 percent of users voted “Yes,” compared to 42.5 percent who voted no (with 17,502,391 votes) – a decisive 15-point margin. It remains to be seen if (and how, and when) Musk will abide by his poll, as he has yet to issue any comment about the results. Shortly after publishing the vote (and when it was already tilting toward Yes), he tweeted “as the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

The vote follows a flurry of activity on Twitter after it announced a sudden rule change prohibiting users from linking to competing platforms and banning several influential users soon after. A massive backlash ensued, prompting an apology from Musk, who also tweeted that “going forward, there will be a vote for major policy changes.” Then, in yet another poll yesterday, @TwitterSafety asked users whether it should “have a policy preventing the creation of or use of existing accounts for the main purpose of advertising other social media platforms.”

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The Final Fantasy ‘Pixel Remaster’ series heads to Switch and PS4

And you can buy a pricey physical edition of the first six games.

If you were looking for a late (and spendy) Christmas gift for your favorite Engadget newsletter editor (hi, me), Square Enix has you covered. To celebrate the Pixel Remaster series’ arrival on Switch and PlayStation, the company is selling a limited-edition bundle of all six entries in the Pixel Remaster series – Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI – as well a vinyl soundtrack set, a 128-page art book and a set of pixel art figurines. A mere $260 to make my Christmas.

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The best Nintendo Switch games for 2023

A guide for beginners, from A to Z trigger.

In time for holiday shopping, we’ve updated and expanded our guide to the best Switch games, covering all the major games that have wowed us since the console’s launch. Sure, there’s Zelda and Mario in here, but there’s also a bug knight, a witch with guns on her shoes and a skateboarding world to explore.

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Instagram lets you create your own 2022 Recap Reel

Select at least three photos or videos and the app will automatically combine them into a Reel.

Instagram has been placing a bigger focus on Reels this year, and that extends to how users create their 2022 Recap – whether you want it to or not. Select at least three photos or videos and Instagram will automatically stitch these together into a Reel with narration templates from the likes of Bad Bunny, Priah Ferguson and DJ Khaled. Hopefully, those can be toggled off, too.

Reels have been a major focus for Meta over the past year. Across Instagram and Facebook, the company now says Reels are played over 140 billion times every day. Meta has been bolstering its answer to TikTok by making it easier to create Reels, launching an in-app Reels scheduler and ways to post to Reels from third-party apps.

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European Commission tells Meta that Facebook Marketplace is unfair to rivals

It ‘abused its dominant position.’

Europe has hit Facebook owner Meta with a complaint that its Marketplace classified service is unfair to competitors. By tying its main social media site to Marketplace, it has a “substantial distribution advantage” over rivals, the EU Commission wrote in a press release.

“With its Facebook social network, Meta reaches globally billions of monthly users and millions of active advertisers,” EU Antitrust Commissioner said in a statement. “Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network, Facebook, to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means that users of Facebook automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace, whether they want it or not.” This all infringes on EU rules that prohibit the abuse of a dominant market position. The EU has the power to impose a fine of up to 10 percent of Meta’s annual revenue and prohibit the behavior. Meta’s head of EMEA competition said the “claims made by the European Commission are without foundation.”

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OnePlus 11 5G launch event set for February 7th

The Alert Slider and Hasselblad camera tuning are back.

OnePlus has revealed when it will formally show off its flagship products for 2023. The Cloud 11 event will take place in New Delhi, India, on February 7th. The company will showcase the OnePlus 11 5G, OnePlus Buds Pro 2 and more. Along with revealing the event date, OnePlus said it would bring a couple of fan-favorite features back for its next flagship smartphone. The OnePlus 11 will once again feature the company’s Alert Slider, which offers an easy way to shift between silent, vibrate and alert modes.

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Nearly 200 countries have agreed to protect 30 percent of Earth’s lands and oceans by 2030. The deal was reached early this morning at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal following two weeks of negotiations. The only holdouts to the deal were the US and the Vatican, though the Biden administration has a domestic plan to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030. 

With the agreement, each participating country agrees to hitting over 20 environmental targets by the end of the decade. A key condition is the so-called 30×30 plan to protect at least 30 percent of land, inland water and coastal areas by 2030. That forms the basis of an international agreement similar to the 2015 Paris climate accord. 

Along with the protection of habitats, nations have pledged to reduce pesticide risks by 50 percent, reduce nutrient runoff from farms and the rate at which invasive species are introduced to ecosystems.

Nations now have eight years to stop the loss of biodiversity being driven by humans due rainforest destruction, species exploitation, pollution and more. Previous agreements, like the biodiversity targets set at Aichi, Japan in 2010, saw nations fail to achieve the goals set. This time, though, there’s a monitoring framework to keep track of progress. 

In addition to protecting species, the draft COP15 agreement urges nations to recognize and respect “the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.” However, Amnesty International wrote that the deal was a “missed opportunity to protect indigenous peoples’ rights,” as it didn’t explicitly recognize their lands and territories as a separate category of conserved area.

Another point of disagreement was between wealthy and poor countries over funds. Nations in South America and Africa that house the world’s largest rainforests wanted assurances from rich countries that they’ll receive money to battle poaching, illegal deforestation and other issues, according to The Washington Post. 

At one point in negotiations, delegates from developing countries walked out of on talks over funding issues. The agreement must “align the resources and the ambitions,” said Columbia’s environmental minister Susana Muhamad. The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister, Ève Bazaiba, added that “when it comes to fauna, we need to have the means to achieve this objective.” 

The COP15 agreement follows a breakthrough deal at the COP27 climate conference, approving a climate damage fund for developing nations. How well the plan will be implemented remains to be seen, though. “While agreements are great, if we’re going to save life on Earth, now we have to roll up our sleeves and do it,” the Center for Biological Diversity’s Tanya Sanerib wrote. “The planet faces an extinction crisis like none ever before witnessed by humankind, with 28 percent of species across the global facing extinction.”