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After announcing last week that all developers would have to pay to access Twitter’s API, CEO Elon Musk has walked that back a step. In a tweet yesterday, he announced that “responding to feedback, Twitter will enable a light, write-only API for bots providing good content that is free.” 

Since August of 2020, Twitter has offered a “basic” free tier as part of its V2 API, designed for “those just getting started, building something for fun, for a good cause, and to learn or teach,” the company wrote at the time. 

In January, however, Twitter revoked API access to third-party apps citing “long-standing rules.” It then updated its developer terms banning third-party clients, effectively killing apps like Twitterific and Tweetbot. Finally last week, Twitter announced that all developers would have to pay to use its API, starting at around $100 per month for the basic tier. 

That resulted in an outcry that the new rules would kill many fun and useful bots that create quotes around tweets, provide alerts for tech execs unfollowing each other, show the weather in random parts of the world and more. Many of the folks who run the bots told Buzzfeed they could never pay that amount to keep them running, so they’d simply disappear. “It was a fun thing, a thing that actually provided Twitter with more value,” said the person behind @BigTechAlert, Álex Barredo.

It’s unclear if Musk’s Twitter will use something like the current basic tier. Also left unsaid so far is what might constitute “good content.” If approval is required for each bot, that could be a challenge considering the company’s severely downsized moderation team. 

Musk has been on a mission to cut costs and find new sources of revenue for Twitter, after telling employees at one point that “bankruptcy is not out of the question.” Around 80 percent of the company’s full-time staff have been let go, leaving just 1,300 in total and fewer than 550 full-time engineers. At the same time, Twitter has introduced subscriptions and detailed plans to share ad revenue with creators.

However, Musk recently tweeted that Twitter is “now trending to breakeven,” following several “extremely tough” months. The company still faces challenges, however, like advertisers reportedly fleeing in droves, class-action suits from employees and potential regulator scrutiny in the EU and elsewhere.

 

Anker’s charging accessories can be even more versatile than what the original manufacturer offers, but they tend to be more costly than other options. Luckily, you can now grab a number of Anker chargers and other products at Amazon with discounts up to 46 percent percent. Some of the key deals include the Anker 737 GaNPrime 120W charger at $57 (40 percent off), the 40W 521 Nano Pro charger ($25 or 30 percent off) and the 621 MagGo wireless charger for iPhone ($35 for a savings of $25) and more. 

Shop Anker charging accessories at Amazon

The 737 GaNPrime 120W charger has a maximum output of 120W and can fully charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro in 1.5 hours, according to Anker. At the same time, it’s more compact than Apple’s own charger and offers a pair of USB-C ports and a USB-A port, so you can charge a smartphone at the same time. Normally priced at $95, it’s an easy purchase at $57 if you’re looking to upgrade or replace your existing MacBook Pro charger. 

If you don’t need that much power, Anker’s compact 40W 521 Nano Pro smartphone/tablet charger is on sale for $25 ($11 off, in Glacier Blue only), giving you a quick charger on the cheap. And if you need a new cable to connect your iPhone, the company’s 10-foot Powerline+ MFi certified charging cord is priced at just $16, for a savings of 27 percent over the regular price.

The company has some battery charger deals as well. The Anker 335 PowerCore 20K 20W power bank with USB-C fast charging costs just $40 right now, or $20 off the regular price. It comes with 20,000 mAh capacity, enough to charge an iPhone 13 4.3 times for days of stress-free use. With a USB-C port and pair of USB-A ports, it can also charge multiple devices at a atime. 

Finally, the Anker 621 5000mAh MagGo wireless charger (with a USB-C cable) is on sale for $35, or 42 percent off the regular $60 price. It snaps right on to your iPhone 12/13/14, is relatively thin at 12.8mm, attaches using a super-strong magnet and charges either wirelessly or via the USB-C port and included cable.

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Five days ago, a review code for Hogwarts Legacy landed in my inbox. I’ve been thinking about this moment for more than a year, ever since the backlash against the game started gaining traction online. The author of the Harry Potter novels is transphobic and she’s targeted transgender women in particular. For this reason, some people in the LGBT+ community, and allies beyond, have decided to boycott Hogwarts Legacy and admonish anyone who chooses to play or stream it themselves, sparking explosive arguments across social media, Twitch and YouTube. Those in favor of the boycott argue that playing the game benefits the author financially and indicates support for her beliefs. On the flipside, potential players point out that the author wasn’t involved in the creation of Hogwarts Legacy and her status as the world’s richest author won’t change regardless of the game’s success. Also, they really want to play it.

I fall into the second category. I’m currently about 15 hours into Hogwarts Legacy and I’m just barely scratching the surface; I’m having an incredible time. This feels like the RPG that Harry Potter fans have been waiting for, rich and alive and absolutely packed with magic.

It’s slightly frightening to write that down, knowing the condemnation I could receive. It’s an extra-light version of the dread I felt while publishing literally anything during Gamergate, but this time it’s more personal: The hate would be coming from people I actually care about.

I’ve been a video game journalist for the past 13 years, I’m a bisexual woman and I have a big ol’ Harry Potter tattoo next to an anti-TERF tattoo. I feel uniquely positioned to care about this particular topic, and to that end, I have a quick story to tell. It involves literary internet culture in the early 2000s, and I hope it illuminates factors that entwine the Wizarding World with the LGBT+ community, while demonstrating the vast divide that’s existed for decades between the fantasy and its creator.

As a pre-teen and throughout high school, I found solace in Harry Potter fanfiction, a bustling online ecosystem powered by Livejournal, FF.net, AO3 and other community-run sites. I cannot overstate how popular Harry Potter fanfiction was and still is, nor how queer it’s always been. Most stories in Harry Potter fanfiction center on LGBT+ characters, and for good reason – in the early aughts, media for and by gay people was ridiculously hard to come by, and then when you did find something, it was often campy, trashy, or both. It was a pre-streaming, pre-YouTube, pre-TikTok way of life. So we wrote our own stories as fanfiction. Long before the release of the final Harry Potter book, we infused the halls of Hogwarts with magically amplified, non-heterosexual and non-cisgender characters, and we wrote millions of words about them living full, fantastic lives. We made Dumbledore gay long before the canon did.

In those early days, an important part of the Harry Potter fanfiction process was critiquing the world and recognizing the limits of the author’s imagination. With each new book release, the forums would light up with praise and criticism, and our own stories would continue to evolve outside of the pages of the novels. These fics are more real to me than the source material; when I traverse the hallways of the Slytherin dungeons in Hogwarts Legacy, my mind accesses memories from my favorite fanfics – not the books – and I’m infused with warmth. The halls of Hogwarts are my safe space, still.

I recognize my circumstances are incredibly specific, but I also know mine isn’t a unique experience. Fantasy worlds offer an escape for queer and non-queer people alike, and coming-of-age fiction can be powerful, formulative stuff. This particular fantasy universe was a place of belonging for me, and I think its latest iteration, Hogwarts Legacy, could offer a similar slice of peace to young players today.

I understand the anger and protective energy from people who don’t want to play the game. It’s a terrifying time to be transgender: Ultra-conservative lawmakers are writing discrimination and blind hate into law, while neo-nazi rhetoric has found new life on mainstream social media platforms. Deadly violence against trans people, particularly Black transgender women, remains a pervasive epidemic in the United States. Among these real-world threats, we’re clashing over the virtues of playing or not playing Hogwarts Legacy. It’s been depressing to observe as this conversation sows division and sucks attention away from our shared goals, limiting our ability to celebrate new successes.

Harry Potter will outlive its author. She is not the future of the franchise. Avalanche, Portkey Games and Warner Bros. have been well aware of the pervasive disgust for the author’s ideology for years, and I believe it encouraged them to include more representation in the game than the series has ever seen. Hogwarts Legacy allows for various expressions of gender identity in the character creator and casually drops “they” pronouns in conversation; all around, the cast is diverse and Avalanche writes non-white characters better than the original author did. There’s still room for improvement, and that’s why the conversation needs to be ongoing: Positive progress is our shared goal.

As someone who searched desperately for an example of my own identity in the pages of Harry Potter novels, I deeply appreciate the evolution and inclusion in Hogwarts Legacy. This level of representation didn’t exist in AAA games 15 years ago, and it’s the result of all the progress made, through protest and education, since the books were published. Long before the in-fighting over a choice to play a video game.

If you don’t want to engage with Hogwarts Legacy, please, boycott the game – just don’t boycott the players. It’s us against the transphobic people in the world, not us against each other. Some of us will choose to play, some of us won’t. Even more will wonder why anyone even cares about this fictional kid and his heteronormative, whitewashed, multibillion-dollar franchise. These are all valid options. Playing Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t automatically make you transphobic. Boycotting it doesn’t automatically make you an ally – supporting our community members does.

We’ll have a full review of Hogwarts Legacy later in the week, once I’ve had enough time with this enormous game to fully form an opinion on it. Even if I catch hell for this perspective, I’ll be here, supporting local inclusion efforts, protesting discrimination, calling my lawmakers, loving my community and playing the gayest version of Hogwarts Legacy possible.

 

The latest game to get the reverse-engineering treatment is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Neowin has reported. A GitHub user called snesrev has fully ported the game to PC using over 80,000 lines of code, while adding some extra enhancements. Those include support for enhanced aspect ratios and pixel shaders, a higher quality world map, secondary item slots and more. 

The version was re-engineered in C code, and requires libraries from the SNES emulator LakeSNES. It features all the same levels, enemies and puzzles of the original game, and can even run the original machine code alongside the ported C version. Another GitHub user, xander-haj, showed exactly how it works compared to an emulation in a YouTube video from last year. 

The ported version of Link joins other recent projects, notably Star Wars: Dark Forces, that have been fully ported to PC. Unlike emulation, which effectively transforms your PC into an old console, reverse-engineered games are rebuilt from scratch, which allows for added features like the widescreen and pixel shades inserted by snesrev. 

Savvy users could create this build on Windows, Mac, Linux and even the Nintendo Switch, with more platforms potentially doable down the road. It’s on shaky legal ground, however. For example, after someone did a very cool PC port of the classic Super Mario 64, Nintendo cracked down and links to the download disappeared from file-hosting websites.

 

Electric vehicle startup Rivian is reportedly working on an e-bike. According to Bloomberg, CEO RJ Scaringe told Rivian employees of the project during a company-wide meeting the automaker held on Friday. He said the startup had a “small group” of engineers working on a bike.

Bloomberg couldn’t confirm if Scaringe was referring to an electric motorcycle or bicycle, but the outlet notes Rivian has patents for cycling components and designs. In the past, Scaringe has said Rivian wants to expand into the micromobility market eventually. Rivian did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

The news that Rivian could be working on an e-bike comes in the same week that the company announced layoffs that would affect six percent of its workforce. The cuts represent the second major restructuring Rivian has undertaken in less than a year. The company said the move was an effort to refocus itself on scaling production of its R1T and R1S EVs and, in turn, put Rivian on the path to long-term profitability. On Friday, Scaringe reportedly told employees Rivian had spread itself thin by trying to do too much at once.

Attempting to expand into the e-bike market when the company has yet to make a profit might not make much sense, but there’s a compelling reason for Rivian to pursue that strategy. Even before the pandemic, the cycling market was growing thanks to the popularity of e-bikes. In fact, electric bikes have consistently outsold electric cars and trucks. It’s no surprise since they’re significantly cheaper to produce and thereby cost less for consumers to buy. A bike then could be what Rivian needs to become profitable sooner.

 

If one of your goals for 2023 is to read more, a new Kindle might inspire you to stick to that intention. Amazon has discounted its entry-level e-reader. Right now, you can get the ad-supported model, in either Black or Denim, for $75 or $25 off its usual $100 price. The 25 percent discount marks a new all-time low for the Kindle, making this a great time to buy the e-reader. Amazon has also discounted the ads-free model by $25. Instead of $120, it’s $95 at the moment. The Paperwhite is on sale too. It will set you back $105.

Engadget hasn’t had a chance to review the new entry-level Kindle. That said, judging from all the upgrades Amazon decided to incorporate into the device, it’s well worth the upgrade if you own an older e-reader. The new Kindle features a 300 ppi e-ink screen, making its display as dense as the one on the more expensive Kindle Paperwhite. Amazon also doubled the amount of storage to 16GB, added USB-C charging and made the Kindle’s frame lighter. Oh, and the new model also features up to six weeks of battery life, another upgrade over its predecessor. Unless you’re specifically looking for an e-reader with a larger display, most people are better off buying the entry-level Kindle over its more expensive siblings.

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SpaceX could attempt to complete Starship’s long-awaited orbital test flight as early as next month, according to Elon Musk. Responding on Saturday to a question from one of his Twitter followers, Musk said the private space firm is targeting a March launch attempt. “If remaining tests go well, we will attempt a Starship launch next month,” he wrote.

While the date of Starship’s orbital test flight has been a moving target for much of the past year and a half, there’s reason to believe next month could see the rocket finally fly. In January, Starship successfully completed its first-ever stacked fueling test. The “wet dress rehearsal” saw SpaceX load both stages of the vehicle with more than 10 million pounds of liquid oxygen and methane fuel. Critically, the company also ran through some of the countdown procedures it will need to complete on launch day.

Among the tests SpaceX still needs to carry out, the most crucial is a static firing of all of the Super Heavy stage’s 33 Raptor engines. To date, the company has never ignited more than 14 of the engines at once. That will need to change for SpaceX to obtain the go-ahead for an orbital test flight from the Federal Aviation Administration. As of the end of January, there were signs SpaceX was preparing to carry out the static test fire as early as the first week of February. That didn’t happen. However, Musk’s comment would seem to indicate SpaceX will attempt the test sooner rather than later.

 

Since 2020, Chromecast with Google TV has been one of the better ways to add more streaming options to an existing setup, thanks in part to the fact you can frequently find the devices on sale. To that point, Amazon has discounted both variants of the streaming stick ahead of the Super Bowl weekend. Following a 20 percent discount, you can buy the 4K version for just under $40 at the moment. At $19.98, meanwhile, the HD variant is at a new all-time low.

Both the 4K and HD versions of Chromecast with Google TV are excellent options if you’re on a budget or prefer how Google does things over its competitors. Engadget gave the 4K version a score of 86 in 2020. Highlights included excellent Google Assistant integration, a comfortable and easy-to-use remote and the inclusion of Dolby Vision and Atmos support. The HD variant is similarly excellent and is a compelling option if you haven’t upgraded to a 4K TV yet. Poor performance used to be one of the reasons to skip a Chromecast with Google TV system, but this past summer Google released a software update to address that issue. For that reason, unless you’re willing to spend significantly more on something like an Apple TV, it’s hard to go wrong with one of Google’s streaming sticks.

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Next year could see the introduction of a new flagship iPhone. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is considering whether to release a more expensive iPhone “Ultra” that would slot in above the iPhone Pro and Pro Max. He says the device could arrive as early next year.

If you’ve been following Gurman’s writing for a while, you may recall he previously reported Apple was considering whether to rebrand the upcoming iPhone 15 Pro Max to the iPhone 15 Ultra. Now, he says there’s evidence to suggest Apple wants to instead offer a more powerful and expensive iPhone to well-heeled consumers. Specifically, Gurman points to a recent comment made by Apple CEO Tim Cook. “The iPhone has become so integral [to] people’s lives,” Cook told analysts when he was asked if the increasing average price of the iPhone was sustainable. “I think people are willing to really stretch to get the best they can afford in that category.”

How Apple will differentiate the new model is harder to say. Gurman suggests the iPhone Ultra could feature a faster processor, better camera hardware than the Pro and Pro Max and an even larger display. “There also may be more future-forward features, such as finally dropping the charging port,” he adds.

It’s worth noting reports on the iPhone 15 line suggest Apple is already searching for more ways to differentiate the Pro models from their mainstream siblings. For example, one recent report said the upcoming Pro variants could feature WiFi 6E connectivity, while the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus ship with older WiFi 6 antennae. The Pro models could come with other differentiating features, including redesigned titanium frames with haptic volume and power buttons. Apple will also reportedly equip the Pro Max with a periscope camera lens.

 

If you’ve been patiently waiting for Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro to go on sale, now is your chance to get them at an all-time low price. Amazon has discounted the earbuds to $200. That’s the lowest price Engadget has seen on the AirPods Pro since they went on sale for Black Friday last year.

Similar appearances aside, the new AirPods Pro represent a significant upgrade over the original 2019 model. Engadget Senior Editor Billy Steele awarded the AirPods Pro a score of 88 when he had a chance to review them last year. They offer improved audio quality and active noise cancellation performance, as well as one of the best transparency modes on any set of wireless earbuds on the market right now. Add to that a redesigned case that is sweat- and water-resistant, the usual conveniences you’ll find on all AirPods, including hands-free Siri and fast pairing, and you have one of the best sets of earbuds you can buy to use with an iPhone. At $200, the AirPods Pro are even more compelling. 

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