Technology

In its ongoing effort to develop new privacy tools that will offer its users more control, Twitter is testing out a feature that enables accounts to remove a follower without blocking them, announced by the platform yesterday with a message from its support team. Users can now go to their list of followers and click the three dots next to a follower’s name. From there, a user is given the option to remove the follower. We’re making it easier to be the curator of your own followers list. Now testing on web: remove a follower without blocking them. To remove a follower, go to your profile and click “Followers”, then click the three dot icon and select “Remove this follower”. pic.twitter.com/2Ig7Mp8Tnx — Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) September 7, 2021 This option streamlines the process t...

Razer’s new Basilisk V3 wired gaming mouse has arrived with more features than its predecessor, as well as a slightly lower price. It’s out now at Razer’s online store, Amazon, and Best Buy from $69.99, a $10 price drop from generation to generation. Its scroll wheel houses the biggest improvements, borrowing a trick from Logitech’s G502 Lightspeed and G502 Hero. A button positioned next to the Basilisk V3’s wheel can toggle between a staggered scroll mode that offers tactile feedback and a free-spinning mode that lets you sail down the page freely. There’s also an optional feature within Razer’s Synapse software that automatically switches between the two modes depending on the inertia of your scroll, engaging the free-spinning mode with lots of power or keeping it notched during more rel...

Apple, like many tech companies, has an intimidating employment agreement that it makes employees sign to protect its trade secrets. Though the agreement is in place to prevent workers from sharing internal details of Apple’s products and processes, it is unclear whether they can speak out about working conditions, according to a group of activists and Apple shareholders. Now, that group is pushing the company to add language that makes clearer exception for cases of workplace harassment and discrimination. Apple has refused. Last week, they filed a shareholder resolution to pressure Apple to make the change. “We approached Apple in good faith and encouraged them to take a leadership role here,” says Ifeoma Ozoma, who’s helping to lead the effort. “Their response was to use the same employ...

At this point, the Life is Strange formula is well established. Each game follows a young adult going through some kind of personal trauma, while also learning to deal with a newfound superpower, whether it’s time travel or telekinesis. So far it has worked in a few different flavors: the original felt a bit like an interactive Veronica Mars, while its sequel built on that with a bold and overtly political story. True Colors is the latest entry in the growing anthology, and it once again features a troubled kid with special abilities who’s struggling to keep it together. It also makes a big change by ditching the episodic format and releasing the complete story all at once Aside from that, it doesn’t mess with the formula much, nor does it make the daring narrative leaps of LiS2. Instead, ...

Sony announced that it will acquire UK-based studio Firesprite, the developers of The Playroom and The Playroom VR. It’s unclear what Firesprite might be working on in its new first-party capacity, but executives are already hyping what’s to come. “Firesprite’s ability to weave best-in-class gameplay with new technology is exceptional and I think fans will be excited about their creative vision for the future,” Hermen Hulst, the head of PlayStation Studios, said in a press release. Firespite was founded by staffers from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Liverpool studio, so there are already strong connections between the two companies. While Firesprite’s experience with The Playroom VR could suggest that the company is working on a game for Sony’s next-gen PlayStation VR headset, in an int...

Toyota will invest around $13.6 billion in battery tech over the next decade, including a $9 billion investment in production, as it attempts to electrify its vehicle lineup, The Wall Street Journal reports. It reportedly plans to have 10 battery production lines by 2025, eventually increasing to around 70 across an unannounced number of factories around the world. Eventually, it could produce as much as 200GWh of batteries, the company’s chief technology officer, Masahiko Maeda, announced in a press briefing. Toyota’s commitments mirror similar investments planned by others across the auto industry. Volkwagen plans to produce around 240GWh of batteries in Europe alone by 2030, the WSJ notes, while Ford has said it plans to produce 240GWh globally by then, including 140GWh in North America...

Media companies in Australia can be held responsible for defamatory comments left on their social media pages by members of the public, the country’s High Court has ruled. The decision is part of a long-running defamation case that could have huge consequences for Australia’s media industry, forcing news sites to strictly moderate or remove comments on stories shared on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. Writing in The Conversation, David Rolph, a professor of law at the University of Sydney, said the ruling “may mean anyone who runs a social media page can theoretically be sued over disparaging comments posted by readers or random group members — even if you aren’t aware of the comment.” “anyone who runs a social media page can theoretically be sued over disparaging comments” The ruling (w...

Amazon is bringing its cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology to two new Whole Foods locations next year, the company has announced. One of the stores will be in Washington, DC, while the second will be in Sherman Oaks, California. When they’re open, customers will have the option of paying at a traditional self-checkout or customer service booth, or having the new technology automatically bill them when they leave the store. The move marks Amazon’s latest step towards scaling its cashierless technology, which works by using a series of cameras and sensors to automatically detect what people pick up off shelves, into a variety of larger stores. Just Walk Out originally debuted in small Amazon Go convenience stores, before the company scaled it up to work in bigger and bigger grocery stores...

When I say “Elizabeth Holmes,” a character probably comes to mind: wispy bleach-blonde hair, black turtleneck, thin, white, unusually low voice, unblinking gaze. In most of her magazine covers, she’s holding a tiny vial meant to contain the “few drops of blood” needed for her company’s finger-prick blood tests. “When I finally connected with what Elizabeth fundamentally is, I realized that I could have just as well been looking into the eyes of a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates,” Theranos advisor Channing Robertson, a Stanford chemical engineering professor, told Fortune in 2014. “She has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think that’s an inadequate comparison,” former defense secretary and Theranos board member William Perry told The New Yorker the same year. (Perry knew Jobs.) “S...

Chinese electric vehicle maker XPeng has now unveiled its latest creation: a robot unicorn. A brainchild of the automaker’s robotics branch, the new concept has taken Boston Dynamics‘ robot dog Spot one step further to re-create a robotic iteration of the mythical creature. The robot will be rideable for children and uses a host of AI technologies previously developed for the company’s vehicles to allow for autonomous “prancing,” giving it the ability to recognize and track different objects, navigate through obstacles and terrain, and even provide kids with what it calls “emotional interaction.” There’s currently no release date or pricing details for the robot unicorn at the moment. Most of the trailer above shows renderings of the machine instead of a physical sample, so it could be pos...

NASA‘s Mars rover Perseverance — also commonly known as Percy  — has managed to collect rock samples from the red planet for the very first time. Celebrating the achievement, the space agency tweeted through the rover’s own account on Twitter an image of the collected sample as well as an explanatory message. The rock was collected by Percy on its 190th day on Mars, and NASA confirmed the data on September 1 following a series of hiccups in previous attempts. Despite receiving data from the rover, scientists wanted to be certain that rock samples had actually been taken and so had to wait for proper lighting before snapping an image of the sample itself inside the titanium collection tube, which was ultimately achieved on September 5. As for the sample itself, images depict rust-red s...

Joining an army of OLED laptops that have launched this month is Lenovo’s new IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon (branded as the Yoga Slim 7 Carbon outside of North America). Lenovo claims it’s the lightest 14-inch OLED laptop on the market at 2.37 pounds. (I’m guessing the company is right. The closest competitor I can think of is Asus’ ZenBook 14X OLED, which is 3.09 pounds. It’s also lighter than both the ZenBook 13 OLED and the Dell XPS 13 OLED.) One thing to note is that the OLED panel (from Samsung Display) comes with QHD+ resolution, rather than the 4K resolution that you often see on OLED laptops. This means you won’t get as many pixels as you would on a 4K OLED machine (like the ZenBook 14X), but you may also see better battery life. QHD+ is still plenty sharp, especially at this size. There a...