Technology

Oculus Quest headsets will soon support multiple users, Facebook has announced. The functionality will allow Quest owners to set secondary accounts on their headsets, which will allow other people to log in and access content shared by the primary user while maintaining separate save data and achievements. The primary account holder will be able to add three secondary accounts and share apps on a single device, though Facebook says you’ll later be able to share purchases across three headsets; the company may also adjust these parameters based on feedback. Apps will be automatically opted-in to the sharing functionality, but developers can opt out before February 12th. The Quest 2’s Facebook account requirement has been controversial, and unsurprisingly nothing changes here — secondary acc...

Samsung Display has released a teaser for its under-screen camera technology meant for laptops, dubbed “Samsung Blade Bezel,” on its Weibo page. It promises that its “UPC” (Under Panel Camera) tech can make a laptop’s bezels smaller without having to relocate its webcam, while also making the OLED display itself be both thinner and lighter. There’s no mention of the impact of the technology on the webcam’s image quality, however, which has become increasingly important in the age of social distancing. We saw the first smartphone with an under-display selfie camera release commercially last year. However, the ZTE Axon 20 5G’s implementation of the feature simply wasn’t very good. The quality of its selfie camera photos was poor, and the portion of the display that covered the camera suffere...

Today, Samsung will unveil the Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21 Plus, and Galaxy S21 Ultra (I’ll take the Zune-inspired brown one thanks). It’s happening a couple months earlier than usual for the S line of phones, but otherwise the script will remain the same. Here’s the script. Samsung will be the first major Android maker out of the gate with Qualcomm’s newest chips, this time with the Snapdragon 888. Samsung will use its unseemingly immense marketing budget and longstanding carrier relationships to ensure it will be seen as the default option if you want a premium Android phone — especially if you are making that purchase in a US carrier store. Other parts of the script are not necessarily guaranteed but are safe bets. They will probably be excellent phones, well-balanced and capable. Samsung wi...

Snapchat will permanently terminate President Trump’s account, Snap announced on Wednesday. Snap had indefinitely suspended Trump’s account last week after he incited a pro-Trump mob to attack the US Capitol, and it has now made the decision to make that suspension permanent. The news was first reported by Axios. “Last week we announced an indefinite suspension of President Trump’s Snapchat account, and have been assessing what long term action is in the best interest of our Snapchat community,” Snap said in a statement shared with The Verge. “In the interest of public safety, and based on his attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence, which are clear violations of our guidelines, we have made the decision to permanently terminate his account.” Trump had attempted...

Universal Studios Japan has announced that Super Nintendo World will not be opening next month as planned. The Nintendo-themed zone of the Osaka park was supposed to open on February 4th after its launch was delayed from last year, but with Osaka being placed under a state of emergency declaration yesterday until at least February 7th, that’s no longer going to happen. USJ says it will announce a new opening date once the state of emergency has been lifted. The state of emergency in Japan was initially issued for Tokyo and its surrounding areas, but yesterday the order was expanded to cover a total of 11 prefectures, Osaka included. The countermeasures aren’t particularly strong compared to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions elsewhere — people are discouraged from making non-essential trips ou...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a series of Tweets, explained that he felt banning US President Donald Trump’s account was the right move for the social network. “Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all,” he wrote. Dorsey blamed Twitter’s failure “to promote healthy conversation,” acknowledged that Twitter needs to “look critically at inconsistencies of our policy and enforcement,” and said that social platforms needed more transparency around moderation. Then, Dorsey plugged an effort to build a decentralized standard for social media he began in 2019 when he sought to hire five engineers to work on it. That’s how, eight tweets into a thread on why his company banned Donald Trump, the CEO of Twitter managed to change...

On January 8th, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump, and proceeded to play whack-a-mole as he attempted to dodge that ban by using different Twitter accounts, each of which Twitter suspended in turn. And yet less than a week later, a Trump video has been posted on the official @WhiteHouse account delivering a new video speech. The speech is not inflammatory — quite the opposite. It features Trump denouncing violence, lawbreaking, and vandalism. It contains messages many might have hoped Trump would issue immediately during or perhaps even before the attack on the US Capitol, to avoid the violence and the five deaths that occurred. Still, it’s very strange to see Trump’s face in a new Twitter video, considering such a video was one of the inciting incidents that got Trump kick...

If you’ve ever wanted to be like Steve Wozniak and have your own custom-made, geeky watch, Squarofumi (stylized SQFMI) may have the product for you: an open-source, Arduino-powered smartwatch with a 1.54-inch e-paper screen (via Gizmodo). It’s called the Watchy, and both the hardware and software are completely customizable. You can, however, use it right out of the box, as the PCB acts as the body and has points to attach a watch strap. And to top it all off, it’s only $50, on sale for $45 at time of writing. The SQFMI site has sections for watch faces and cases, but at the moment they both only say “Coming Soon,” so if you’re thinking about this watch, you’ll definitely want to make sure you’re ready for a DIY project. Oh, and there’s also the fact that the watch doesn’t come assem...

Google says it’s aware of a problem with Pixel 4A 5G touchscreens and is working on a fix. Some devices are failing to respond consistently to taps on the lower part of the screen, which is particularly impacting folks who have opted for three-button navigation rather than swipes. Android Police spotted complaints from 4A 5G owners experiencing the issue, which seems to have cropped up after the December security patch was released. Google’s response comes courtesy of a Pixel support forum post. The company says it will address the problem ”in an upcoming software update”, but it’s looking like that will be at least a couple more weeks away since Android Police reports January’s security patch didn’t address it. In the meantime, Google advises users to work around the issue with some speci...

Asus announced its new ZenBeam Latte at CES 2021 today, and it’s kind of cute. It’s a mobile movie projector that looks like a one-eyed, fabric-covered mini-robot of sorts. Importantly, it fires out its 720p image using up to 300 lumens of LED light, making it brighter than capsule projectors we’ve seen from the likes of Anker, and it has an integrated 10W Harman Kardon-tuned speaker system to boot. Weirdly, Asus insists that its projector looks like a coffee cup. The ZenBeam Latte projector.Image: Asus It does not. It’s not the right shape (just watch the video!), and why would a “homey” coffee cup (Asus’ word) be gray instead of a glorious brown? Asus also claims it is “the first projector to offer a fabric exterior,” which is demonstrably false. Of course, you cannot drink Asus’ latte b...

Asus has announced a new fanless addition to its family of Chromeboxes: the Asus Fanless Chromebox. Like Asus’ previous models, the Fanless Chromebox’s compact size is designed to be mounted to the back of a display or desk to save space in size-conscious work environments. Perhaps unintentionally, it also looks almost exactly like a wireless router. The Asus Fanless Chromebox dimensions come out to about 8.15 x 5.82 x 1.26 inches, which gives its aluminum chassis a small, rectangular shape. But the real wireless router aesthetic comes from the ridged design on the top of the box and the two adjustable antennas on the back. The Asus Fanless Chromebox piggybacking on the back of a display.Image: Asus Inside, the Chromebox features either a 10th Gen Intel Core or Celeron processor: you can c...

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has asked Tesla to recall some 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles that could suffer from failing display consoles, according to a letter published by the agency on Wednesday. The failures of the so-called “media control units” in these vehicles can sever the owner’s access to their vehicle’s backup camera, climate controls, and Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system, increasing the risk of a crash, the safety agency says. The problem at the heart of the defect that NHTSA wants Tesla to fix involves worn-out flash memory chips used in the displays of 2012-2018 Model S sedans and 2016-2018 Model X SUVs. Each time an owner turns on one of these Teslas, it eats away at the total capacity of the the 8GB eMMC NAND flash memory chip onboard...