Technology

Huawei laptops haven’t been widely available in the US for years. But they’ve traditionally been fantastic products, with good enough performance and build quality to make them serious MacBook competitors. So I figured I’d review the MateBook 16, Huawei’s latest flagship notebook, even though it may not be on the radars of our US readers. Consider this a resource for those in markets where Huawei is still operating but also a quick check on what the rest of us are missing out on. On the outside, the MateBook 16… kind of looks like a MacBook Pro. Huawei’s got the colors and the general vibe down pat. Whether it performs as well as a MacBook is, of course, another question. Most of the MateBook 16 is great, from the speedy and comfortable keyboard to the all-day battery life, massive 3:2 dis...

Otter.ai is adding new limitations to the free Otter Basic plan on the subscription service, which will limit free users to 30-minute transcriptions starting December 1st, down from the current 40-minute limit. The company says that the changes are “due to increased costs and to maintain high standards of service.” Otter.ai is still offering the same 600 minutes of transcription per month to free users, however. The overall monthly limit for free users isn’t changing, however The change isn’t hugely problematic in the long run, given that Otter.ai still isn’t changing the total amount of transcription that free users can do — just the amount that you can have transcribed in a single recording. That means that attentive users can simple just start a new file once the 30-minute limit is reac...

One day you’re just another Brute on the Halo ring minding your own business, and the next you’re a rock star. That’s Craig, Halo Infinite’s infamous Brute that appeared in the notorious trailer last year. He might have originally represented the poor quality of graphics in the original Halo Infinite trailer, but now he has been memorialized as a rock star inside the game in an Easter egg. The Craig shrine can be discovered on top of a giant tower in the fourth campaign mission in Halo Infinite. It includes a greatest hits album and a tour poster with dates for when Craig is holding a Zeta Halo tour . Songs include classics like “The Day You Become a Meme, I Got Tears Last Summer” and “I Smile Inside.” Craig’s greatest hits album. The Brutes inside Halo Infinite (like Craig) have had a glo...

I wasn’t ready to start sneaking around a Banished warship in my first few minutes in Halo Infinite’s campaign, but there I was facing down an army of Grunts, Jackals, Brutes, and Elites. The initial thrill of the classic Halo music and the familiarity of the enemies was a nostalgia overload for a good few minutes, but after it all wore off I noticed the new Grappleshot. Oh, boy. I first played Halo 20 years ago, and while the combination of grenades, melees, and an assortment of weapons and vehicles still remains today, the Grappleshot is an entirely new addition that transforms the campaign mode. It’s an ideal companion that left me excited and wanting to upgrade it fully during my first few hours of the campaign. Just Grappleshot Jackal shields to kill them easily. You’re introduced to ...

Twitter has quietly rolled back its support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) on mobile, according to a support page spotted by SEO consultant Christian Oliveira. The support page originally detailed how Twitter would automatically send users of its mobile apps to the AMP version of a page from links posted on the social network. However, at some point since October 21st, Twitter updated the page with a notice saying it’s retiring the feature by the end of the year. According to data from SearchEngineLand, this retirement process appears to have been completed earlier this month. Now, attempting to visit a page from Twitter appears to send users directly to the regular web page, rather than an AMP version that may be available. Twitter’s notice saying it’s retiring the AMP feature.Image: ...

Facebook has announced a new feature to its social media platform that will better allow users to customize their news feed. Facebook has revealed that they are making a more friendly way for its users to “find and use News Feed controls to adjust people’s ranking preferences.” Over the years, the Facebook platform has continuously been working on providing its users with ways to ensure that their News Feed is as tailored as possible. Now, the new feature gives users greater control over who’s content they want to see or ignore. This is applicable to Groups and Pages the user is connected to. Professional businesses will also receive additional News Feed controls in the form of the Topic Exclusion controls. According to Facebook, “the advertiser topic exclusion control allows an advertiser...

With the automotive industry becoming one of the biggest victims of the global microchip shortage, various automakers including Ford and General Motors are now hoping to remedy the situation by creating chips themselves. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, both American automakers are now looking at taking matters into their own hands by working with various semiconductor manufacturers across the globe to increase manufacturing volumes together. A recent press release from Ford has announced a non-binding collaboration with manufacturing powerhouse GlobalFoundries, which will eventually aid the automaker in bringing chip development in-house. “We feel like we can really boost our product performance and our tech independence at the same time,” explains the company’...

MediaTek has just announced its latest flagship processor: the Dimensity 9000, the company’s most powerful chip ever that looks like it should be able to go head to head with the best chips that more popular competitors like Qualcomm and Samsung offer. Where previous top-tier Dimensity chips (like last year’s Dimensity 1000) were still less powerful than contemporaries like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 or Samsung’s Exynos 2100, the new Dimensity 9000 is coming out of the gate to make a case for 2022 Android flagships. The new Dimensity 9000 is the first mobile chip to be built on TSMC’s 4nm process, in addition to using Arm’s new v9 architecture. It’s also the first announcement CPU to use Arm’s new core designs: a single Cortex-X2 performance core clocked at 3.05GHz, three Cortex-A710 cores ...

Police in Hamilton, Ontario in Canada arrested a teenager in connection to a $46 million CAD ($36 million USD) cryptocurrency heist — the largest cryptocurrency theft by a single individual ever reported. Hamilton Police joined forces with the FBI and the United States Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force in March 2020. The investigation centered around a U.S.-based victim who had a large amount of cryptocurrency stolen from them. Police say the individual had been targeted by a SIM swap attack, a type of fraud that involves a scammer manipulating mobile phone networks to assume the phone number of someone else and bypass any two-factor authentication processes tied to the victim’s phone. As a result of this attack, the victim had about $46 million CAD ($36 million USD) stolen. Poli...

Microsoft‘s head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, told employees that he is “evaluating all aspects” of its relationship with Activision Blizzard in the wake of a major sexual misconduct scandal. In an email to staff seen by Bloomberg on Thursday, Spencer said he and other leaders were “disturbed and deeply troubled by the horrific events and actions” that transpired at Activision Blizzard, one of the largest video game publishers in the world. Allegations first surfaced in July after California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard over its culture of “constant sexual harassment” and “frat boy” culture. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard‘s longtime CEO, knew about ...

LG first said in January that Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service was headed to some of its TVs, and now, it’s finally here — though as a beta. LG is rolling out the beta this week for “select 2021 LG 4K OLED, QNED Mini LED, and NanoCell TV models in 80 markets,” according to a press release. GeForce Now lets you play PC games you own on other devices via the cloud, and this new webOS app will make it easier to use the service on a bigger screen. That said, games will be capped at 60fps and 1080p resolution — you won’t be able to play GeForce Now games in 4K via the webOS app. (That feature is currently exclusive to Nvidia’s Shield TV set-top box.) Every GeForce Now tier is supported, Nvidia tells The Verge, including the new tier that lets you play games on its dedicated RTX 3080 po...