Technology

Twitter announced Tuesday that it’s dropping a feature from its live broadcasts tool, but the company is removing it in service of making your video broadcast quality better. What’s gone? Now, you aren’t able to invite guests to join you in a broadcast via audio ahead of going live. That feature was added in March 2020. Now, when you go live, your broadcast will just feature you and whoever else happens to be in the frame, though people can still post in the chat or tap to add a heart to interact with you while you’re broadcasting. As of today we’re removing the option to invite guests when you go live, so we can improve your video broadcast quality. Your viewers can still interact with you through chat and hearts. https://t.co/bymoq55VIy — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) October 5, 2021...

Canon has announced what’s easily the oddest glass yet for its EOS R mirrorless camera system: a dual 5.2mm f/2.8 fisheye. The fisheye lenses are 60mm apart and are designed for creating 3D VR images and video content; Canon calls out the Oculus Quest 2 as a potential hardware destination and says this is “the world’s first digital interchangeable lens that can capture stereoscopic 3D 180° VR imagery to a single image sensor.” The lens can be used to shoot up to 8K footage on the EOS R5, which appears to be the only camera it’ll work with. Canon is releasing a 1.5.0 firmware update for the R5 as well as a Premiere Pro plug-in and a standalone file conversion app called EOS VR Utility. Canon calls this combination the EOS VR System and will be making the software available on a subscription...

Following a temporary Facebook systems outage, former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, who recently leaked tens of thousands of pages of Facebook’s internal documents and appeared on 60 Minutes, testified before the Senate on Tuesday. “I believe what I did was right and necessary for the common good, but I know Facebook has infinite resources, which it could use to destroy me,” Haugen said ahead of her testimony. Frances Haugen worked at several big tech companies including Google, Pinterest and Yelp before her two-year stint at Facebook. “Working at four major tech companies that operate different types of social networks, I have been able to compare and contrast how each company approaches and deals with different challenges,” she said in her prepared testimony. She specializes i...

I regret to inform you that Intel has again made a terrible ad to showcase how absolutely not mad it is about Apple switching to its own processors. This one, called “Breaking the Spell,” follows a classic format — people are put in a room and told about features supposedly coming to MacBooks. Then, after they get all excited, the twist! They were actually being told about Windows computers, powered (of course) by Intel. The folks in the ad (which the fine print says are “real people paid for their time and opinions”) are speechless and then clamor to buy or take the laptops, presumably now that they’ve awoken to the possibilities of the PC. It’s an ad format that’s never been great, but the real kicker is that it makes absolutely no sense here — in the intro, Intel claims it’s showing off...

Late Monday night, Google filed for a court order to produce documents from longtime Google critic Luther Lowe, as part of its ongoing federal antitrust case, US vs. Google. The motion arises from an apparent breakdown in negotiations between Google and Lowe’s employer, Yelp. Yelp has agreed to document production from a number of its employees, but has resisted on Lowe in particular, leaving Google to ask the court for a subpoena that would compel email archives and other documents. “Yelp cannot deny Google the documents it needs to defend itself” “Yelp’s allegations against Google conceived and advanced by Mr. Lowe, are a central part of the government’s case,” the filing reads. “Now that the very governmental action Yelp advocated for in its communications is underway, Yelp cannot deny ...

Mark Zuckerberg posted a staunch defense of his company in a note to Facebook staffers, saying that recent claims by an ex-employee about the social network’s negative effects on society “don’t make any sense.” On Tuesday, a former Facebook product manager named Frances Haugen testified before Congress about a trove of internal documents she gave to The Wall Street Journal. The focus of the hearing was on Facebook’s internal research that showed Instagram can have a negative effect on young people, but Haugen took the opportunity to also attack the company’s business model and News Feed algorithm. One of her main arguments was that Facebook’s business of selling ads based on engagement leads it to keep users on the service at all costs, even when it knows that the content they’re engaging ...

T-Mobile has announced that it’s cutting the price of its 5G-powered home internet service by $10, bringing it back to the $50 price that it charged during its pilot program. That $50 a month gets you internet with no data cap, speeds that T-Mobile estimates will be anywhere from 35 to 115 Mbps, and a router capable of turning 5G and LTE into Wi-Fi (which you’ll have to return if you ever cancel the contract-free plan). T-Mobile is adamant that your bill won’t be higher than $50 — in its press release it says there’s no installation fees, activation fees, or equipment rental fees. It seems to view this as a kind of apology for all the fees traditional ISPs like Xfinity and Charter have charged. It’s pretty self-congratulatory, but it’s hard to argue that the service seems like a bad ...

Facebook has given users some insight into yesterday’s global outage. Around 12:00 p.m. ET on October 4, Facebook, as well as Instagram and WhatsApp, temporarily shuttered around the world, marking the platform’s biggest outage since 2008. It wasn’t until around 6:00 p.m. ET that some users reported being able to once again use Instagram. Now, Facebook has shared a bit more information about the shutdown in a post on its engineering blog. “Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication,” the post read. “This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt.” Essentially,...

Apple has garnered more profits from video games than Sony, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft combined, according to a recent analysis conducted by The Wall Street Journal. The publication compared figures from the companies’ for the 2019 fiscal year, in which it found that Apple’s profits from games came out to $8.5 billion USD. The news may come as a surprise to some since the technology company doesn’t actually make its own games. Rather, the profits were reported to stem from its App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut of sales from developers. Epic Games’ “Fortnite” to Tencent’s “Honor of Kings” were named as some of the games that contributed to Apple’s alleged lead over competitors. Following trends of years past, 2019’s profits were likely amassed by a relatively...

Scroll’s ad-free subscription web service is shutting down as an independent entity in “approximately” 30 days, the company announced in an email to subscribers. The service — which was purchased by Twitter earlier this year — will instead be rolled into the burgeoning Twitter Blue premium subscription as “Ad-Free Articles.” In its current form, Scroll is a $5-per-month service that offers ad-free browsing to hundreds of websites, including The Atlantic, BuzzFeed News, G/O Media, USA Today, and Vox Media — which, full disclosure, includes The Verge. It works by using a combination of third-party cookies and browser extensions to stop websites from showing ads to paid subscribers. Aw man, Twitter is shutting down Scroll. It was a great little service that let me read The Verge, The Atlantic...

EA is making Battlefield 2042 a little bit more accessible across generations. The company announced Tuesday that the digital Standard Edition of Battlefield 2042 on PS5 and Xbox Series X / S now includes the Cross-Gen Bundle, which gives you access to both the PS4 and the PS5 or Xbox One and Xbox Series X / S versions of the game. Previously, the Cross-Gen Bundle was only available with the more expensive digital Gold and Ultimate editions of Battlefield 2042. It’s important to note that this cross-gen benefit has only been added to the digital Standard Editions for next-gen consoles. If you buy the digital Standard Edition on PS4 or Xbox One, where it is $10 cheaper than it is on the PS5 and Xbox Series X / S, you won’t get the Cross-Gen Bundle. The Cross-Gen Bundle is also not an option...

Microsoft is launching Windows 11 virtually today, and the company is promising a “first-of-its-kind 6D streaming event,” featuring Allen Stone and Tate McRae. I’m not entirely sure what a “6D musical experience” is, but Microsoft’s website promises multiple camera views during its stream and even a free Windows 11 NFT. Microsoft describes its Windows 11 NFT as a “one-of-a-kind cryptographic token that lives in your digital wallet and unlocks valuable experiences and rewards.” Again, I’m not sure what valuable experiences and rewards this will unlock, but we’ll find out at 8PM ET / 5PM PT when the Windows 11 launch stream goes live. Windows launch events typically happen in New York City, but Microsoft hasn’t held any in-person events since the pandemic began. Instead, Microsoft is giving ...