Technology

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said Wednesday that the platform is testing the long-awaited Take a Break feature to give users reminders when they’ve spent a long time on the platform. “It does what you think it does,” Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter. “If you opt in, it encourages you to take a break from Instagram after you spend a certain amount of time on the app; 10, 20, or 30 minutes,” he said. Testing “Take a Break” ‍ We started testing a new feature called “Take a Break” this week. This opt-in control enables you to receive break reminders in-app after a duration of your choosing. I’m excited to dig into the results & hopefully launch this sometime in December. ✌ pic.twitter.com/WdSTjL6ZdH — Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) November 10, 2021 The feature is “part o...

Apple is solving a complicated problem with its latest iOS update: right of survivorship. Until now, when a loved one or family member dies, there was no easy way to access their iCloud account and absolutely no way of unlocking their phone without knowing their passcode. According to the iCloud terms of service, the deceased person’s data goes with them even with a death certificate. With the new Digital Legacy program, first announced at WWDC earlier this year and arriving in iOS 15.2, you can designate up to five people as Legacy Contacts. These individuals can then access your data and personal information stored in iCloud when you die, such as photos, documents, and even purchases. To activate Digital Legacy, Apple still requires proof of death and an access key. Still, it’s a much mo...

Beginning on Wednesday, YouTube will remove public dislike counts, or the visible tally of how many “thumbs down” a video receives, across its platform. The dislike button will still be accessible so that users can help regulate the recommendations they receive from the video-sharing site’s algorithm, though their dissatisfaction with a video will be kept private. Video creators will be able to view the number of their dislikes alongside all of their other private analytics, but the public number will soon disappear. Earlier this year, YouTube conducted an experiment with the dislike button and found that users were less likely to engage in “dislike attacking behavior” when the number was not visible. Additionally, the video site confirmed that smaller creators are targeted by this behavio...

Elecjet’s new Apollo Ultra battery pack uses graphene to dramatically speed up charging. Yes, graphene, that miracle material that has long promised to change the world, allows this 10,000mAh portable battery to charge from zero to full in less than 30 minutes, about five to six times faster than a conventional power bank of the same capacity. Plug it in when you wake up and the Apollo Ultra should be fully charged by the time you leave the house. Graphene is a highly conductive lattice of carbon only one atom thick. Pure graphene batteries are still too expensive to mass-produce, but the material can already accelerate the charging characteristics of traditional batteries when applied to an electrode in composite form. That’s the approach Elecjet is taking with its new 10,000mAh (40Wh) ba...

Paramount Plus has announced a new partnership with Twitter centered around better promoting its exclusive shows and events, in addition to hosting three Twitter Watch Parties with fans for “select highly-anticipated original series.” Or, more practically speaking, Paramount Plus would really, really like its shows to be viral on Twitter, with the kinds of trending topics and engagement that ultra-popular shows like HBO’s Succession enjoy on a weekly basis. And what better way to be popular on Twitter than to cozy up to Twitter directly? A lot of this deal is deeply boring stuff, things like granting major Paramount Plus shows “Twitter marketing support and brand sponsorship sales rights via Twitter’s Amplify program.” ViacomCBS will also use Twitter for promoting live video, highlights, a...

YouTube has announced that it’ll be hiding public dislike counts on videos across its site, starting today. The company says the change is to keep smaller creators from being targeted by dislike attacks or harassment, and to promote “respectful interactions between viewers and creators.” The dislike button will still be there, but it’ll be for private feedback, rather than public shaming. This move isn’t out of the blue. In March, YouTube announced that it was experimenting with hiding the public dislike numbers, and individual creators have long had the ability to hide ratings on their videos. But the fact that the dislike counts will be disappearing for everyone (gradually, according to YouTube) is a big deal — viewers are used to being able to see the like-to-dislike ratio as soon as th...

Juiced, the San Diego-based electric bike company known for its extremely fast, extremely heavy, moped-style cruisers, wants you to know that its newest model, the RipRacer, is “fun-sized.” Not like tiny-Snickers-bars-you-hand-out-at-Halloween-fun-size, but like a smaller frame size for a younger generation of riders. Electric bikes are typically marketed and sold to adults, but increasingly, companies are seeing an opportunity around selling bikes to teens and young adults. Juiced is the latest to try its hand at making bikes that are smaller and cheaper than the typical e-bike. The RipRacer may be fun-sized, but it will no less powerful than Juiced’s other hulking models The RipRacer may be fun-sized, but it will no less powerful than Juiced’s other hulking models. It will come in two ve...

Gameplay footage from Rockstar’s upcoming remaster of its PS2-era Grand Theft Auto trilogy has appeared online, after gameplay footage was apparently uploaded from early copies. VGC has collected together three YouTube uploads and one Reddit post, which between them show over an hour of footage of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Although Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition is just one day away from release, Rockstar hasn’t shared any substantial gameplay footage from the remastered games. A trailer released last month focused almost exclusively on cutscenes from the three games rather than the gameplay enhancements Rockstar is promising for the almost two-decade-old trilogy. [embedded content] But these leaked gamepla...

The EU’s second-most senior court, the General Court, has upheld a 2017 ruling by the European Commission which found that Google broke antitrust law in how it used its search engine to promote its shopping comparison service and demote those of its rivals. Google and its parent company Alphabet appealed the decision, but the General Court today dismissed that appeal and upheld a fine of €2.4 billion ($2.8 billion). Google and Alphabet now have the option to appeal the decision yet again with the EU’s highest court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This is one of three antitrust cases pursued against Google This outcome is significant as it strengthens antitrust arguments made by the EU’s influential competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager against US tech firms. In addition to this...

Google has updated its Google Home Android app to add a built-in remote for Android TV, Google TV, and other devices like the Nvidia Shield. The feature, which was spotted by 9to5Google, is a helpful option if you misplace a physical remote control. To use it, head to the page in the Google Home app for the device you want to control, and then tap “Open remote” in the bottom left corner of the page. Although the Google Home remote feature is only available on Android for now, its eventual launch on iOS has the potential to be the far more useful addition. That’s because Android users already have the option of using a similar software remote via the Google TV app as well as a remote tile in quick settings. iOS users, meanwhile, don’t get access to these same convenient features. Unfortunat...

Reportage and press photography are some of the grittiest gigs in the industry, and to help photographers cope with the challenges Leica‘s Q2 Reporter is the unquestionable camera of choice. Now, the luxury camera brand has released its new Q2 Reporter, finished with a Kevlar-wrapped body to help it combat the tasks that the photographer also faces. The robust piece is deliberately discreet, coming sans-branded so as not to distract the photographer at work. Instead, you get Leica’s white stamp on the lens, and of course, a signature design that is identifiable to any snapping aficionado. Enveloped in Kevlar, which has been woven in a unique fashion for this particular camera, the Q2 Reporter is more hardwearing than ever before while also being grippy and resistant to chemical and thermal...

As a response to growing concern over how Facebook shares your data with advertisers, the social media platform is now banning all targeting categories that it deems “sensitive,” including political affiliations, religion, and sexual orientations. In a new blog post, the company acknowledged that while it “strongly believe[s] that the best advertising experiences are personalized,” it also “want[s] to better match people’s evolving expectations of how advertisers may reach them on our platform and address feedback from civil rights experts, policymakers and other stakeholders on the importance of preventing advertisers from abusing the targeting options we make available.” To do so, it has now decided to remove certain “Detailed Targeting” options such as a user’s political stance, their f...