Technology

Last month Nikon announced the development of its highest-end mirrorless camera to date, and now Canon has responded with the announcement of the EOS R3, which ought to fit in a similar bracket. The R3 is still in development and details are thin, but it’s clear that it’ll be positioned above the EOS R5, which is currently Canon’s flagship mirrorless camera. Like Nikon’s upcoming Z9, the EOS R3 looks to be a hefty camera with a built-in vertical grip for shooting in portrait and landscape orientations. The body design and control layout is broadly similar to the EOS-1D X Mark III, Canon’s highest-end pro DSLR, and the body features dust and water resistance. Canon says the EOS R3 will be the first camera to use a new 35mm full-frame stacked CMOS sensor with backside illumination, and its i...

Sony is announcing two new phones today, the Xperia 1 III and the Xperia 5 III. Both are the latest in Sony’s campaign to redefine the Xperia brand as a kind of sibling to its well-regarded Alpha digital cameras. As such, the camera system is once again the main focus, and Sony specifically is touting the “world’s first smartphone with a variable telephoto lens paired with a Dual PD sensor” and improvements to its already fast and accurate autofocus system. Pricing was not announced, but they should both be available in the US “this summer.” Each phone has the basic specs you’d expect on a top-flight Android phone: three cameras on the rear, a Snapdragon 888 processor, and support for 5G. Actually, the 5G support is worth noting because these Xperia phones will be able to work on 5G networ...

The 2022 iPhone lineup will feature substantial changes to the camera system, according to analyst Ming-chi Kuo in an investor note reported on by MacRumors and AppleInsider. Kuo says the high-end iPhones — presumably the Pro range — will use a larger 48-megapixel sensor for the primary camera. Separately, the analyst suggests that 2023 iPhones may start to use Face ID sensors under the screen as a way to get rid of the notch. 48-megapixel sensors have been common in Android phones for years, but this component will reportedly be larger than most. It’ll be a 1/1.3-inch sensor with a pixel size of 1.25µm, according to Kuo. That’s smaller than the 1.7µm pixels in the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but Kuo says that the equivalent pixel size will be more like 2.5µm when the sensor is used for 12-megapixe...

In what’s believed to be an unprecedented move, the FBI is trying to protect hundreds of computers infected by the Hafnium hack by hacking them itself, using the original hackers’ own tools (via TechCrunch). The hack, which affected tens of thousands of Microsoft Exchange Server customers around the world and triggered a “whole of government response” from the White House, reportedly left a number of backdoors that could let any number of hackers right into those systems again. Now, the FBI has taken advantage of this by using those same web shells / backdoors to remotely delete themselves, an operation that the agency is calling a success. “The FBI conducted the removal by issuing a command through the web shell to the server, which was designed to cause the server to delete only the web ...

Oculus is announcing that wireless PC streaming, a 120Hz refresh rate, and improvements to Infinite Office will be coming to the Oculus Quest 2 with the v28 software update, which the company says will be rolling out soon. Infinite Office is a feature that Oculus includes as part of Oculus Home, which lets users work in a virtual environment. With the v28 update, Infinite Office will have an experimental feature that allows users to add a virtual desk where their real-life desk is, letting users know where they can sit and put real-life physical objects down without having to leave VR. The Quest 2 will also be able to show a virtual representation of the Logitech K830 keyboard, though Facebook says that support for visualizing more keyboard models will be coming in the future. Another feat...

The Overwatch League kicks off its fourth season this week, and while the majority of matches will be played remotely, today the league announced plans to hold multiple live events in China. There will be three events spread across three cities — Hangzhou in June, Shanghai in July, and Guangzhou in August — and the league says they will take place in venues with reduced capacity “in order to comply with local safety requirements.” The events will be something of a hybrid between online and in-person competition. Here’s how OWL describes it: The five China-based teams — Hunters, Charge, Spark, Valiant, and Dragons — plan to travel to each of the events to compete onstage, while the three Korea-based teams — NYXL, Fusion, and Dynasty — are not expected to travel. Matches taking place between...

Near the end, Ludwig Ahgren slept a lot. Nestled in his race car bed with a blanket over his face and something new playing in the bottom corner of his screen, Ahgren exuded exhaustion. It was after all day another day in the streamer’s Twitch subathon; he’d been live since March 14th, and now there was less than an hour left on the clock. Though as he knew, this had happened before. A number close to zero was no guarantee that the stream would end. Except this time was different, because he’d finally reached the limit he’d set for himself — 31 straight days of streaming. Since he started his subathon, Ahgren had become the most subscribed to streamer on Twitch. On the 13th, the day before he took his subathon live, he’d amassed 1,730 subs, per the stat site Twitch Tracker. By April 1st, h...

Gigabyte has announced three new 4K gaming monitors for its Aorus brand, each features HDMI 2.1, the somewhat hard-to-find display connector that allows for high refresh rate gaming at 4K (via TweakTown). Besides having some of the best tech available in TVs or monitors, all three have desk-dominating sizes. According to a press release posted by VideoCardz, the monitors will also feature VESA’s HDR 1000 standard and come in three sizes: 32, 43, and a mind-boggling (for a gaming monitor anyway; we’ll get back to that) 48 inches. The 48-inch version is a little different, and it set off a firestorm of discussion at The Verge, so let’s set it aside for just one moment. The 32- and 43-inch monitors, named the FI32U and the FV43U, respectively, will feature 144Hz panels. Gigabyte is also claim...

A man who was falsely accused of shoplifting has sued the Detroit Police Department for arresting him based on an incorrect facial recognition match. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on behalf of Robert Williams, whom it calls the first US person wrongfully arrested based on facial recognition. The Detroit Police Department arrested Williams in 2019 after examining security footage from a shoplifting incident. A detective used facial recognition technology on a grainy image from the video, and the system flagged Williams as a potential match based on a driver’s license photo. But as the lawsuit notes, facial recognition is frequently inaccurate, particularly with Black subjects and a low-quality picture. The department then produced a photo lineup that included Williams’ pictu...

Samsung has announced a new Galaxy Unpacked event set for April 28th at 10AM ET, teasing the announcement of “the most powerful Galaxy” device. The teaser, as is typical for these invitations, isn’t too forthcoming. But given the nature of the announcement and Samsung’s usual release cycle, there are a few hints we can suss out. First, the description of whatever Samsung is announcing as “the most powerful Galaxy” would seem to rule out a phone, like the rumored Galaxy Z Fold 3. The most generous depiction of a mobile processor — even one as powerful as Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 888 — still isn’t in the same ballpark as a true laptop processor. And despite recent headlines, Samsung is still rumored to reveal the Z Fold 3 at a July event, potentially a replacement for the Galaxy Note’s...

According to the telecom industry news site Light Reading, the big three US carriers are walking away from the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative. The CCMI was meant to be a joint effort to promote RCS, the next-generation messaging standard designed to replace SMS. But while that might seem like bad news on the face of it, what it actually means is that carriers have given up on a bad plan that would have been bad for consumers. Whether or not they will replace it with a good plan remains, as ever with RCS, to be seen. The CCMI was launched in 2019 and by all indications was a joint effort that was spearheaded by Sprint. It initially seemed like a mixed bag of news. At the time, any effort by carriers to support proper cross-compatibility in RCS was a good sign. But the bad part was the c...

Today’s announcement that federal officials have recommended pausing use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine might hurt efforts to encourage people to get vaccinated. But — critically — that doesn’t mean the federal officials shouldn’t have made the recommendation, says Melanie Kornides, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing who studies why some people are hesitant to take vaccines. “Some people are missing the message — they’re so worried about hesitancy, that they’re not seeing how important it is to address the safety, in order to make people feel less hesitant,” she says. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the pause while they investigate six reports of rare blood clots i...