Technology

President Trump reportedly has COVID-19, and while some are wishing for his speedy recovery, others have publicly tweeted a hope that he’ll die of the disease. As you might imagine, that’s expressly against Twitter’s rules — and the company tells Motherboard that it will enforce them. In other words: You can’t tweet that you hope Trump dies of COVID. Specifically, Twitter tells the publication that it will suspend people who hope for Trump’s death, though it’s not clear how often Twitter will be able to do so. Here’s an example of a recent reply to Trump’s original tweet that already seems to be attempting to dodge detection: I hope you make “the sacrifice” too; like other people have. — One Voice (@OneVoic09474519) October 2, 2020 And Twitter did tell Motherboard that it won’t act on ever...

The new Microsoft Flight Simulator is an immersive beast of a PC game, and we can only imagine how immersive it might get in VR — but you might not have to imagine much longer, because Microsoft has just opened signups (via Eurogamer) for a closed beta of the virtual reality experience. There are quite a few requirements if you want to be considered, though. Not only do you have to own the game, have a Windows Mixed Reality headset, be a registered Microsoft Flight Simulator “Insider” and sign an NDA, you’ll need a slightly beefier PC than the base game — with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 or better sporting 8GB of VRAM, as well as 16GB of system memory. And, you’ll need to prove your PC qualifies by submitting your DxDiag (press your Windows start button, type “dxdiag”, hit Enter) so Microso...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey have agreed to testify virtually before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 28th, Politico reported Friday evening. Assuming that the hearing is live-streamed in some way, that means you’ll be able to watch some of the world’s most powerful people get grilled by policymakers who’ve recently discussed changing the laws that let their companies grow to an unfathomable scale. The hearing, which will take place just six days before the US Presidential election, will be the second major Congressional hearing featuring big tech CEOs this year; the House antitrust committee heard from Pichai, Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in late July. We learned a number of interesting things from...

Google officially dropped Daydream virtual reality support from Android 11 — a final step in its retirement of the system. As Android Police notes, Google posted an announcement saying its latest version of Android doesn’t support the VR platform’s app. “Daydream VR app is no longer supported by Google and may not work properly on some devices running Android 11 or later,” it reads. In fact, the Daydream software is no longer supported at all, according to Google. It won’t receive updates, although users can potentially still access third-party VR apps through the Play Store. Google had already sidelined Daydream VR. It discontinued the Daydream View headset and dropped support on new Pixel phones in 2019. But it continued to support the Daydream app for existing users. Now, even that is a...

Would-be TikTok competitor Triller has allegedly inflated its monthly active user numbers, according to a report published in Business Insider. In the last month Triller — a short-form video app that has attracted a number of TikTok stars, including the most popular person on the platform, Charli D’Amelio — announced that it had more than 100 million monthly active users. Speaking to Business Insider, six former employees dispute those numbers, and they told reporter Dan Whateley that Triller’s numbers were shady, based on their experience with the company. Back in October of last year, Triller said it had reached 13 million monthly active users and 60 million app downloads. A screenshot provided to Business Insider of one of the company’s analytics dashboards, however, shows a different s...

Since releasing them last year, Apple has quietly continued to improve upon the AirPods Pro with firmware updates that have tweaked their noise cancellation and sound quality. The company rarely details or comments on the changes that come in each release of AirPods firmware; there are no update notes that spell out what’s new. Nor is there any way to manually force install the latest AirPods / AirPods Pro software. It just… happens in the background at some point as you use them. But last month, the AirPods Pro picked up a pair of new features that Apple did announce: spatial audio and automatic switching. Automatic switching is the simpler one, and it’ll probably make a bigger difference to your day-to-day use of the AirPods Pro. (It’s also be available on standard AirPods and sele...

Operating system updates can often suffer from unwanted glitches, and it seems that the latest iOS 14 and watchOS 7 releases from Apple are not immune. There have been complaints over the last few days that some people who have updated their devices have found — instead of increased efficiency — a wide range of issues, including missing fitness data, health apps that refuse to open, inaccurate reports of stored data, and increased battery drain on iPhones and Apple Watches. But while Apple has posted a way to resolve some of these issues, it’s not an easy fix. When we checked Twitter, there were quite a few irritable messages from users whose batteries were losing power way too quickly. For example, one user tweeted, “The battery drain is unbelievable. From 90 percent to 3 percent in one h...

Twitter this week announced it would be changing how image cropping works on its website after concerns that the machine learning-based algorithm the company was using was racially biased in how it cropped images, in particular by favoring white faces over Black ones. In a post diving into the issue, Parag Agrawal, the company’s chief technology officer, and design chief Dantley Davis explained how the company tested the model for racial or gender bias before it implemented the system. But Twitter didn’t publish how it had done those tests at the time so that external analysis could be performed, in what the company calls “an oversight.” “What you see is what you get” To fix that, Twitter is “currently conducting additional analysis to add further rigor to our testing, are committed to sha...

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One of the magical things about television is how, through the power of drama and/or comedy, it can take someone who would, in almost any other context, be the worst person you know, and make them fun to watch. That’s not to say that Emily Cooper (Lily Collins), the eponymous star of Emily In Paris, is a terrible person. She’s just someone you’d diplomatically describe in text messages as “a lot,” and in the new Netflix series, you get to see her inflicted on an entire nation. Emily In Paris is one of the most watchable new shows on Netflix this fall, ridiculous in the way the best romantic comedies are, even if it’s a bit short on the charm. It starts with a dream job: when Emily’s boss at Chicago marketing firm Savoir discovers she’s pregnant, she abandons her plan to move to the company...

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 2 has survived having dirt dropped on it in a new durability test from YouTuber Zack Nelson (aka JerryRigEverything), backing up Samsung’s claims that its hinge is more durable on this year’s device. Nelson’s test involved dropping a handful of dust and dirt on Samsung’s new foldable, and he reported the phone continued to feel just as smooth to open and close. That indicated the worst of the dirt hadn’t made its way inside the mechanism. Durability was one of the key promises Samsung made when it announced the Z Fold 2 back in August. To illustrate its point, the company even used a clip from Nelson’s original Galaxy Fold durability test. He found that a handful of dirt dropped on the foldable would immediately find its way into its hinge mechanism, making it feel ...

YouTube’s website now supports iOS 14’s picture-in-picture mode once again, after the functionality mysteriously disappeared last month. It can be enabled in both Safari as well as third-party browsers like Chrome or Firefox by expanding a video to play fullscreen, and then tapping the small picture-in-picture icon on the top-left of the interface. Then you’re free to minimize the browser and use other apps while the continuing to watch a video. You can also slide the PiP window to the side if you just want to hear music without the video obstructing the display. OS-level picture-in-picture support was added as a new feature in iOS 14, but shortly afterwards stopped working on YouTube’s website for iPhone users. It continued to work for users who subscribe to YouTube Premium, perhaps unsur...