Technology

Big changes are arriving on Instagram this week, enabling creators to tell their stories, connect with their audiences and express themselves in new ways. The platform’s very first Product Week starts this Tuesday, featuring daily product drops and launches. On October 19, Instagram is introducing Collabs, which allows users to co-author feed posts and Reels. From the tagging screen, users can invite collaborators. If accepted, the content will be displayed on both accounts, and both account titles will appear in the header. The posts/Reels will also have a shared like count, view count, and comment section. On October 20, the platform is testing a new way to make fundraisers easier. With the new update, users can start a fundraiser from the “+” creation button in the top right corner wher...

The day before a job, Luiza Ferreira always messages her client on WhatsApp to confirm they need her services. Ferreira is a cleaner in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and she cleans different households every day. If the job is confirmed, she knows she won’t be wasting money on her commute and guarantees income for that day. If the job is not confirmed, she tries to fit another client in her schedule so she doesn’t lose money for the day. But on October 4th, that system fell apart. A configuration change in Facebook’s internal network wiped the company’s services off the internet for six hours — including WhatsApp. Cut off from Brazil’s primary mode of communication, Ferreira’s business ground to a halt. “That’s income I can’t really get back” “By the time I started using SMS instead of WhatsApp,...

Apple’s new MacBook Pros are here, and they may actually live up to the “Pro” moniker. But there’s one big question that comes with the new sizes and processors: how’s the battery life? To hear Apple tell it, it’s going to be great — the company even said onstage that the 16-inch had the best battery life ever, besting last year’s M1 Macs (which it also boasted would have the longest-lived batteries). But the metric Apple used to back up that claim is a bit suspect, and its other numbers tell a very different story. In its keynote and press release, Apple says the 14-inch MacBook Pro will provide 17 hours of video playback and estimates that the 16-inch model can last for an unprecedented-for-Macs 21 hours. But using video playback as a measure of battery life is really only useful if you’...

Smart home company Wyze has revealed its latest category-breaking device, and this time, it’s going straight for Ring’s lunch with an impressive-sounding video doorbell that checks pretty much all the right boxes. Except maybe the “cool style and nice design” one. Available for preorders on October 19th and shipping in December, the Wyze Video Doorbell Pro costs $65 (plus shipping), can be installed fully wired or wire-free, has up to six months of battery life, and a 1:1 aspect ratio that can take in your entire front porch. It records and streams video in 1440 x 1440 HD and offers 12-second clip playback for motion and sound events for free. The recordings are stored in Wyze’s cloud; there is no local storage option. The doorbell comes with a Wyze wireless Chime, which offers 20 differen...

After leaks and pre-annoucements, ads and yet more leaks, the time has come for Google to officially launch the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. We already know many details: the custom Tensor processor that powers it, the colors and many of the specs, and even some of the software features have all been officially announced. And rumors have filled in more details. But there will be more to hear from Google. This is easily the most important Pixel the company has launched in years, it’s a launch where the company says it is taking on flagships from Apple and Samsung at the high end. Google hasn’t really talked big game about its phones before, so even if we’ve seen a lot of rumors, how Google goes about making this launch happen will be interesting. We’ll likely get a deeper dive into the specs on...

TikTok has launched its first-ever Discover List, which intends to highlight users who have had a large impact on trends and conversations within a specific category on the video-sharing platform. The new feature, which TikTok debuted on Tuesday morning, includes top creators within five sectors: icons, innovators, foodies, changemakers and originators. TikTok’s community team selected various creators for the list based on various analytics and measurements, including “engagement, views, video creations, account growth, likes, interactions with followers, and also which creators and content have sparked conversations both on and off the app,” according to a blog post. The icon category, which features creators who are “well-known up and down the [For You page] and outside of TikTok,” incl...

Mashable has just worked out how much a new fully-specced Apple MacBook Pro will cost. Now packing the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, this top-of-the-line MacBook Pro elects for the latter chip in the 16-inch chassis. Starting at $2,499 USD, the model quickly jumps to $3,899 USD when you upgrade to the M1 Max chip with 64GB of memory. The biggest jump comes when you upgrade the max amount of storage of 8TB of SSD storage, which adds another $2,200 USD. The final price for a fully kitted out MacBook Pro will set you back $6,099 USD. And if you go another step further and add all the additional software options, it racks up to nearly $6,600 USD ($6,598.98 USD to be exact). And this is not including all of Apple’s new products that it announced on Monday. In other tech news, take a first look at th...

The Chicago Sun-Times needs help. After being bought and sold several times over the last decade, the 73-year-old paper is looking for a more stable home to continue its award-winning reporting — and it may have finally found it in an unexpected place: a radio station. Chicago Public Media, which owns the radio station WBEZ, is currently in talks with the Sun-Times to merge. A final deal would combine their newsrooms and audiences in hopes of creating a financially stable enterprise for both teams. Similar mergers and acquisitions have become a common way to bolster the struggling print industry, but if radio were to take on a major newspaper, that would be a first. “Audio is a growth business,” says Jim Friedlich, chief executive of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, who advised CPM on...

It’s still not a full trailer, but Netflix showed off the best look yet at its upcoming live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation in a new teaser to celebrate the one-month countdown to the show’s debut on November 19th. Like the previous teasers for the show (which so far have included stills and the opening credits), the latest video, titled “Cowboy Bebop: The Lost Session,” isn’t actually made up of footage from the show but does show off the key trio of Spike Spiegel (John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) in action as they hunt down a bounty, get some noodles, and fight through an army of thugs. That said, it’s a very fun teaser, shot with kinetic, color-coded shifting frames that bounce between Spike, Jet, and Faye as they bicker and brawl back an...

Fortnite’s big Halloween event, Fortnitemares, is making its return. But this year’s edition comes with a fun twist: one-time Fortnite performer Ariana Grande is now officially part of the game’s lore, with a questline that turns her into “the galaxy’s greatest monster hunter.” The event runs from today until November 2nd, and — in keeping with this season’s theme — it’s centered on the ever-present cubes that now dominate Fortnite’s island. The story event is called “The Wrath of the Cube Queen,” and developer Epic describes it like this: Since Fortnitemares began (and even before), the cubes have been mobilizing. Their migration towards the island’s center wasn’t just to spread corruption — they’re now at the center forming the Convergence. What is the purpose of this mysterious structur...

Apple’s new 140W charging brick, which works with a new MagSafe charging cable to power the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, uses the USB-C Power Delivery 3.1 standard, Apple has confirmed to The Verge. As well as being included with the new 16-inch MacBook Pro, the brick is available separately for $99 (not including the USB-C-to-MagSafe cable, which costs an extra $49). Meanwhile, the new 14-inch MacBook Pros come with 67W and 96W chargers, depending on the exact model. Using the USB-C PD 3.1 standard means Apple’s new charging brick will be cross compatible with other devices that use the same power delivery standard, which was announced earlier this year alongside the USB Type-C Release 2.1 specification. It also means that MacBook owners have the flexibility of using compatible third-party ch...