Technology

Ikea’s new $9.99 / €7.99 / £6 Trådfri Shortcut Buttons and existing $14.99 / €12.95 / £12 Trådfri Motion Sensors recently gained HomeKit support to the delight of many Apple device owners. Importantly, the addition is cumulative for the most part, allowing the Ikea devices to function with the best features of Ikea Home Smart while layering on the best of Apple. I’ve been testing both Ikea Home Smart devices for the past few days and while setup is predictably buggy, when they’re up and running it’s glorious, especially for the price. Motion sensors designed to work with HomeKit aren’t cheap. They range in price from $21 to $57 according to this roundup from iMore. The popular Motion sensor from Philips Hue, for example, is more capable but costs $40, or almost three times as much as Ikea’...

In the weeks before and after the 2020 US election, Facebook content from far-right sources of news and misinformation received more engagement than other sources elsewhere on the political spectrum, a new study from New York University has revealed. The findings suggest that far-right pages have an advantage energizing followers on the world’s biggest social network. “My takeaway is that, one way or another, far-right misinformation sources are able to engage on Facebook with their audiences much, much more than any other category,” Laura Edelson, a researcher at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy initiative who helped compile the report, told CNN. “That’s probably pretty dangerous on a system that uses engagement to determine what content to promote.” Researchers looked at some 8.6 millio...

Microsoft is starting to modernize some of the basic parts of Windows 10 by improving the system icons that are available in the operating system. A new preview build of Windows 10 is rolling out to testers this week, and it includes system icons that now adhere to Microsoft’s Fluent Design style. The new icons include a more rounded and simplified look, and are available as a new font — Segoe Fluent Icons. Microsoft has also updated its new taskbar widget with the new icons, providing a good look at how basic icon changes can modernize even the smallest parts of Windows. Some of the new system icons for Windows 10.Image: Microsoft It’s a small change to Windows 10 that will appear later this year for most, but it’s part of a broader push by Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10. Microsoft upda...

More than 20 police agencies around the US own drones from US manufacturer Skydio, according to Forbes, which calculated the figure based on a combination of freedom of information requests and public announcements. The report follows news that Skydio is the first US dronemaker to be valued at over $1 billion following a recent funding round. Working with police departments is thought to be part of Skydio’s attempt to make inroads against dominant player DJI, which is said to command between 70 and 80 percent of the commercial drone market. Skydio started offering its drones to government agencies for free last year, and over 30 public agencies reportedly took them up on the offer. America’s Custom and Border Protection is also testing using the company’s drones this year. “Steering away f...

WhatsApp’s desktop app for Mac and PC is getting voice and video calling today, the company announced, offering end-to-end encrypted calls to other WhatsApp users on both computers and mobile devices. Voice and video calling isn’t a new idea for WhatsApp: the mobile apps for Android and iOS already offer the feature, and WhatsApp started to roll out the desktop calling feature to a small group of users at the end of last year. But today’s launch means that the feature is now available to all WhatsApp users on desktop, making calling a more ubiquitous feature across all WhatsApp devices. No, Facebook can’t eavesdrop on your calls And like the existing video calling feature, the new desktop calling promises the same end-to-end encryption — meaning that WhatsApp and Facebook can’t see or hear...

Who is Samsung’s biggest mobile competitor? The first name that comes to mind is Apple, of course. But most people aren’t really in the habit of switching back and forth between iOS and Android with each phone purchase. So who is it? Samsung is consistently ranked as the biggest phone maker in the world. Huawei is usually number two, largely because of its sales in China where Samsung is a nonentity. And number three right now is Xiaomi. The reason I bring this up is because Xiaomi’s latest flagship phone, the Mi 11, is not only extremely good in its own right but a phone that arguably outflanks Samsung’s latest lineup. It costs less than the $799 Galaxy S21 in markets where it’s sold, but in many ways, it has more in common with the $1,199 S21 Ultra. The Mi 11 would be a strong competitor...

Several great apes at the San Diego Zoo received two doses each of a COVID-19 vaccine in February, National Geographic reports. The lucky recipients are four orangutans and five bonobos, who were distracted with treats as they got their shots. One of the orangutans is Karen, the first ape to undergo open-heart surgery in 1994. Ape vaccination is a welcome development at the San Diego Zoo, where a troop of eight gorillas tested positive for COVID-19 in January. The sick gorillas were symptomatic but have now recovered, according to the zoo. They’ll likely join their orangutan and bonobo compatriots in vaccination later in the spring. developed by a veterinary pharmaceutical company after the first recorded case of COVID-19 in a dog The vaccine the apes received is not one of the vaccines th...

Apple has added a service that lets you automatically transfer photos, videos, and albums from your iCloud Photo Library to Google Photos (via MacRumors). The feature has a support document outlining the procedure, which simply entails going to privacy.apple.com, logging in, and going through the “transfer a copy of your data” process. Apple says the transfer will take between three days to a week. Some things won’t transfer: Apple says shared albums, smart albums, photo stream content, live photos, some metadata, and media that isn’t stored in your iCloud Photo Library won’t come along for the ride. The part about Live Photos is especially eyebrow-raising. iPhones take Live Photos by default, and Apple doesn’t make it clear if the entire picture will be left behind, or just the video clip...

Nintendo is planning to release an upgraded model of the Switch this year with an OLED screen, according to a new report in Bloomberg. The report says Samsung Display is providing the screen, which will be a 7-inch 720p rigid OLED panel set to go into mass production this June. The current Switch has a 6.2-inch 720p LCD panel, while the Switch Lite’s screen is a 5.5-inch 720p LCD. Many Switch games struggle to hit native resolution in handheld mode, so the lack of an upgrade in resolution isn’t really a surprise. Bloomberg’s report does note, however, that the new Switch model will be capable of 4K graphics when hooked up to a TV, so the decision to stick with 720p in handheld mode could also be about preserving battery life. The report doesn’t state a possible release date for the new Swi...

A planned Motorola-branded Wear OS smartwatch with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Wear 4100 processor may have leaked (via 9to5Google). If the photos are real and not just renders, it could be a sign that the next Moto 360 (or whatever it’s called) could perform significantly better than the last, and may reap some of the efficiency gains brought by the jump from a 28nm process to a 12nm one. The 2019 Moto 360 used a Snapdragon Wear 3100 processor, which was only a minor update to 2016’s 2100. Despite Qualcomm’s claims that the new(ish) 4100 has an 85 percent faster CPU, two-and-a-half times faster GPU, and 25 percent more battery life, it seems like there’s only one watch on the market that actually has the chip. The image that shows the potential watch (and which also seems to show a wireless...

The YouTube app on older Apple TV models has officially been discontinued as of today. If you have a third-generation device (the 2012-era model that predated the modern tvOS-based set-top boxes), you’ll only be able to stream YouTube through an iOS device using AirPlay starting today, as noted by 9to5Mac. While the news has been known for a while, the change highlights a key issue with the Apple TV ecosystem. Namely, that it’s been nearly three and a half years since Apple has last updated its streaming box hardware. If you own the old model with the now defunct YouTube app, your only Apple-made option is the Apple TV 4K, released in September 2017. That’s particularly problematic, given that the Apple TV 4K still starts at $179 (with a pricier 64GB model that offers double the storage fo...