Technology

Sony’s Xperia 5 III, the compact counterpart to its Xperia 1 III, is now on sale in the US, almost nine months after the company initially announced the device in April 2021. The phone retails for $999.99 and will be available in black or green, with the latter exclusive to Sony’s own online store. The phone went on sale in the second half of last year in the UK and Europe. The phone has seen some internal upgrades compared to the Xperia 1 II, which bring it more into line with mainstream handsets from 2021. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor, runs Android 11 out of the box, and should also be able to benefit from at least some 5G connectivity in the US. Elsewhere, battery capacity has been upped to 4,500mAh, and Sony advertises that this larger battery can be charged to 5...

If you own digital Harry Potter books purchased on Pottermore, you might want to redownload your copies before the option disappears for good at the end of the month. The site is emailing its customers to warn them that the books will no longer be available to redownload after January 31st, since being removed from sale in September last year. When it launched back in 2012, Pottermore was the only official way to download digital copies of the Harry Potter books. Despite big stores like Amazon running promotions for the titles, which are some of the best-selling books of all time, stores would funnel customers to Pottermore to complete the sale (retailers like Amazon reportedly still got a cut, however). But sales of the e-books reportedly declined over the years, and in 2015 they were mad...

US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has threatened the government funding of chipmaker Intel after the company made what Rubio described as “humiliating apologies” to China. Intel issued apologies to its Chinese partners and the Chinese public last December after it noted in a routine letter to suppliers that it would not use “labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.” This stipulation is required by US law as part of trading sanctions against China for its ongoing persecution of the Xinjiang region’s Uyghur population (which the US government has designated a genocide). Intel’s letter to suppliers, though, went viral in China, and caused a huge public backlash against the company. As first reported by The Verge last year, Intel not only issued public apologies but also deleted...

The Rijksmuseum has released what it claims is the “largest and most detailed photograph of any artwork,” and it’s viewable for free on its website. The scan is of Rembrandt van Rijn’s 1642 masterpiece The Night Watch, a roughly 12 by 14 foot painting which is currently the focus of a massive research and restoration project called “Operation Night Watch.” The technical details of the scan are staggering. In a press release, the Rijksmuseum explains that it’s made up of 8,439 individual photographs taken with a 100 megapixel Hasselblad H6D 400 MS camera. Neural networks were reportedly used to check each image for color and sharpness, and an AI system helped stitch these photos together into a single image. The result is a 717 gigapixel image that’s 5.6 terabytes in size, where each of its...

Apple says it will introduce third-party payment options for the first time ever in iOS apps, following South Korean legislation designed to open up the perceived monopolies of Google and Apple’s app stores. The alternative payments will only be available in South Korea and follows the announcement of similar changes by Google last November. Apple’s decision was shared by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) and reported by the Yonhap News Agency, but details of the implementation are thin on the ground. Arguments over payment fees triggered the Epic Games trial Apple currently charges developers a 30 percent fee on any digital purchases made by consumers using iOS apps. This fee has become increasingly contentious for developers, and was at the heart of the huge US lawsuit between Ap...

It turns out the Apple Watch Series 8 might not have as many features as first believed after all. In the build-up to the launch of Apple’s next generation of smartwatches, numerous rumors from regular sources such as Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, The Wall Street Journal and analyst Ming-Chi Kuo all noted that the upcoming device will carry a brand new body temperature sensor among other features such as fertility planning, blood glucose levels and blood pressure checking. However, Gurman himself has now backtracked on his previous comments, suggesting that all this new tech may still be a while away. “Don’t expect any of these soon, though. Body temperature was on this year’s roadmap, but chatter about it has slowed down recently, the analyst wrote in his latest Power On newsletter. ...

Developers have now made more than $260 billion USD through Apple‘s App Store. Announcing the figure in a new press release looking back at 2021, the company revealed more than 600 million people across 175 countries visit the App Store each week, contributing to the over $260 billion USD made by developers over the course of its life since the digital storefront’s launch back in 2008. Most incredibly, more than $60 billion USD from that figure was brought in in 2021 alone, with customers spending “more than ever before between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, driving double-digit growth from the last year.” “Apple’s world-class portfolio of services proved essential in 2021, as people worldwide sought new ways to keep entertained, informed, connected, and inspired,” said the company’s se...

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the would-be creator of a “decentralized” Amazon Web Services alternative with scamming investors out of millions. The SEC announced a complaint on Friday against Australian citizen Craig Sproule, the CEO of cryptocurrency startup Crowd Machine, which promised a global cloud computing network built on users’ computers. In reality, Sproule allegedly sent $5.8 million to South African gold mines as investors’ cryptocurrency tokens became worthless. An SEC complaint says that Sproule collected at least $33 million through an initial coin offering (or ICO) to build a decentralized “Crowd Computer” platform, which he claimed was “battle-tested” by Fortune 500 companies. He compared the service to AWS and Microsoft’s Azure and said that Crowd...

The Associated Press, or AP, has announced that it’s starting a marketplace to sell NFTs of its photojournalists’ work in collaboration with a company called Xooa. It’s billing its foray into NFTs as a way for collectors to “purchase the news agency’s award-winning contemporary and historic photojournalism” and says that the virtual tokens will be released at “broad and inclusive price points” (though it’s hard to tell what types of prices resellers will want on the AP marketplace). The news outlet says its system will be built on the “environmentally friendly” Polygon blockchain and that the NFTs will “include a rich set of original metadata” to tell buyers when, where, and how the photos were taken. It says its first collection, launching January 31st, will include NFTs featuring photos ...

Uber has ended support for its app on the Apple Watch. According to MacRumors, the ride-hailing giant has now shut down the app on the accessory platform, and those trying to access it will be met with a rather oddly worded message reading: “Please switch to the Uber mobile app. We are no longer supporting the Apple Watch app. Sorry for the inconvenience.” As the outlet points out, Uber itself hasn’t removed the app yet from Apple’s App Store and the support page hasn’t been updated either to reflect the changes, but the shut down shouldn’t come as a surprise, as its WearOS counterpart was removed as early as two years ago and competitor Lyft‘s Apple Watch app has also been removed since 2018. It’s unclear why Uber decided to end support at this time, but it’s likely due simply to low user...

Olympic’s first-ever skateboarding champion Yuto Horigome is releasing an NFT to commemorate his major milestone. The gold medalist is releasing the NFT in partnership with FWENCLUB, a new digital and physical collectibles creations platform. Tilted “The Golden 22,” the digital sculpture celebrates the moment the 22-year-old became a world champion in skateboarding. The figure captures Horigome performing his signature trick, a historical move that landed him his first cover on Thrash Magazine and a gold medal at the debut skateboarding event at the Tokyo Olympics. Only one piece is available, a nod towards Horigome’s commitment to originality. The NFT is also metaverse-ready as it can be easily incorporated in all aspects of the digital world. The owner of the digital figure can use it fo...

On Saturday, Android boss Hiroshi Lockheimer accused Apple of “using peer pressure and bullying as a way to sell products,” after a Wall Street Journal report revealed how US teens have turned Apple’s iMessage into a social status symbol that locks Android users out. Now, Lockheimer is taking a slightly less abrasive stance: the Google executive said Monday that “we’re not asking Apple to make iMessage available on Android. We’re asking Apple to support the industry standard for modern messaging (RCS) in iMessage, just as they support the older SMS / MMS standards.” We’re not asking Apple to make iMessage available on Android. We’re asking Apple to support the industry standard for modern messaging (RCS) in iMessage, just as they support the older SMS / MMS standards. — Hiroshi Lockheimer ...