Technology

Instagram only widely launched its TikTok competitor Reels in August, and it’s already looking to monetize the format. The company announced today that it’ll start testing shopping within Reels later this year and will also start making shoppable IGTV videos global starting today. Eventually, these IGTV videos will also be available through Instagram Shop, a dedicated page for shopping within the app. Viewers can just tap through an IGTV video and purchase the items they’re interested in through Instagram checkout or the seller’s website. It’s unsurprising to see Instagram try to make shopping at thing on Reels, although the rollout timeline seems fast. Still, Facebook has prioritized commerce over the past few years, which could lead to it taking a bigger role in online transactions. The ...

Nvidia has announced a new videoconferencing platform for developers named Nvidia Maxine that it claims can fix some of the most common problems in video calls. Maxine will process calls in the cloud using Nvidia’s GPUs and boost call quality in a number of ways with the help of artificial intelligence. Using AI, Maxine can realign callers’ faces and gazes so that they’re always looking directly at their camera, reduce the bandwidth requirement for calls by up to 90 percent by only transmitting “key facial points,” and upscale the resolution of videos. Other features available in Maxine include face re-lighting, real-time translation and transcription, and animated avatars. Nvidia’s face alignment feature will make sure you’re always looking at the camera Not all of these features are new ...

When I first got to see Volkswagen’s new ID 4 electric SUV at an eerily empty launch event in Brooklyn last month, the company’s executives warned me not to make the obvious comparisons to other electric vehicles, namely Tesla. That was because Volkswagen’s real targets are popular gas-powered compact SUVs, like the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V, and Toyota RAV4. VW has its eyes on a higher prize. A couple weeks later, as I climbed into the front seat of the ID 4 for a brief test drive across Manhattan, my main objective was to see how this car stacked up against those other popular players. Compact SUVs are one of the most popular segments in the American car market, and as a compact SUV owner myself (2010 Subaru Outback, what what?), I felt uniquely qualified to tease out the ID 4’s quirks. I ...

The Zeiss ZX1, a unique camera that was announced more than two years ago before the company essentially stopped talking about it, may actually be in customers’ hands at some point in the near future. As noted by DPReview, B&H Photo has sent out emails saying that it’s coming soon and is now available to preorder for $6,000. It was originally supposed to be released in early 2019. Why would anyone pay $6,000 for the ZX1? Well, it wouldn’t be wise to order without at least waiting for hands-on impressions of the finished product, but it is fair to say that it’s a one-of-a-kind camera. It has a 37-megapixel full-frame sensor, a fixed 35mm f/2 lens, an electronic viewfinder, and three dials to control aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. More unusually, it has a 4.3-inch touchscreen and runs...

The second largest cinema chain in the US is temporarily closing its doors nationwide. Cineworld, parent company of Regal, announced that it will be suspending operations of its 536 Regal theaters as of Thursday, October 8. The suspension also affects 127 Cineworld and Picturehouse cinemas in the UK. Cineworld had only just reopened theaters in August. The closures will impact approximately 40,000 employees across the US, the company announced. It also affects 5,500 employees in the UK, The Guardian reports. Today’s announcement follows news over the weekend that the release of the 25th James Bond film, No Time to Die, has again been pushed back to April 2021 due to the ongoing pandemic. Theaters were counting on the latest 007 installment to drive sagging ticket sales. We are like a groce...

Twitter has confirmed it’s working on a new feature, currently dubbed “Birdwatch,” that could let the Twitter community warn one another about misleading tweets that could cause harm. There’s an awful lot we don’t know about the idea, including whether Twitter will actually release it to the public or how it might work in its final form, but enough has leaked out that we do have a pretty fair glimpse — which, we understand, is still early in development and would not be released ahead of the US election. As TechCrunch notes, the existence of such a tool was first discovered by Jane Manchun Wong, who often digs through app code for evidence of unreleased features, back in August. At a basic level, the idea is that you’ll be able to attach a note to a misleading tweet: Twitter is working on ...

Sony has invited a number of Japanese publications and YouTubers to get a closer look at the PlayStation 5. It’s the first time we’ve seen the PS5 hardware outside of leaked images from Taiwan’s National Communications Commission. A variety of publications have now published detailed hands-on images and videos of the PS5, providing a more realistic look at how big the console is and gameplay of titles like Astro’s Playroom and Godfall. 4gamer has published photos of the PS5 standing both vertically and horizontally, demonstrating how the stand works in either position to hold the console in place. Some photos also show how the PS5 will cool itself, and 4gamer notes that it wasn’t able to hear the fan inside the console or feel much heat exhausting from it during its limited time with the h...

Apple is suing former recycling partner GEEP Canada — now a part of Quantum Lifecycle Partners — for allegedly stealing and reselling at least 103,845 iPhones, iPads and Watches that it was hired to disassemble. “At least 11,766 pounds of Apple devices left GEEP’s premises without being destroyed – a fact that GEEP itself confirmed,” reads a portion of Apple’s complaint, as reported by The Logic (via AppleInsider). Apple sent the recycling firm over 500,000 iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches between January 2015 and December 2017, according to The Logic’s report. When Apple did an audit, it discovered 18 percent of those devices were still accessing the internet through cellular networks. That 18 percent doesn’t count Apple devices without a cellular radio, so it’s possible an even hi...

If you’ve seen one Razer Blade laptop in the past few years, you’ve essentially seen them all. The new Blade 15 Advanced is another one of those monochromatic, monolithic machines milled out of aluminum. But this one is a beast on the inside, with enough year-to-year improvements elsewhere to be worthy of your attention. At nearly the top of Razer’s configuration tree sits this $2,999 ($2,799 at the time of publishing) model that I’ve been testing for the last week. It has a powerful eight-core Intel Core i7-10875H processor, Nvidia’s RTX 2080 Super Max-Q graphics chip, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and 16GB of RAM. Topping it off, it has a 1080p display with a 300Hz refresh rate. This configuration is powerful, and it has no issue playing all of today’s most demanding games at high frame rates with its...

Cineworld, owner of the largest chain of theaters in the UK and Ireland and the second-largest in the United States — Regal Cinemas — will reportedly close all its theaters next week, according to Variety, The Sunday Times, and others. Variety reports that all 543 theaters in the US will be closed, which account for the chain’s 7,000+ screens in the region. The Sunday Times reports that it will close all 128 theaters in the UK and Ireland, too. Both say James Bond is the reason. Yesterday, the 25th James Bond film — No Time to Die — was pushed back to April 2021 due to the ongoing pandemic, denying theaters one of the last major tentpole releases due out this year. Apparently, theaters were counting on Bond, specifically, to arrive on time and help bail them out of poor ticket sales. The n...

“A big frustration with the Apple TV 4K is about to be history,” my colleague Chris Welch wrote, when we learned that Apple’s premiere set-top box would finally be able play 4K YouTube videos at their native resolution instead of being stuck at 1080p. These days, even a $40 dongle can do better than that. But though Apple’s latest software updates did bring YouTube 4K to the Apple TV 4K, the frustrations aren’t necessarily over. It turns out you’re limited to watching 4K at 30fps, instead of a smooth 60 frames per second, and without the depth of color and contrast that High Dynamic Range (HDR) provides. That’s what 9to5Mac noticed yesterday, and we’ve confirmed with Google that — for now — Apple TV only supports 4K at 30fps with SDR content. iPhones and iPads don’t necessarily have this l...

You would think a dating app that knows your sexuality and HIV status would take thorough precautions to keep that info protected, but Grindr has disappointed the world once again — this time, with a gobsmackingly egregious security vulnerability that could have let literally anyone who could guess your email address into your user account. Luckily, French security researcher Wassime Bouimadaghene discovered the vulnerability, perhaps before it could be exploited, and it’s now been fixed. Unluckily for Grindr, the company ignored his disclosures — until security researcher Troy Hunt (of Have I Been Pwned) and journalist Zack Whittaker (of TechCrunch) each confirmed the issue and wrote about it. The details need to be seen to be believed (so please look at the image above) but the short ver...