Technology

Instagram is testing out a new feature that allows users to pin posts to their grid, according to TechCrunch. The new feature is reportedly already showing up as an option for some users. Those with access see a “Pin to your profile” option on the three dots icon next to posts. The post will then appear at the top of a user’s feed on their profile. “We’re testing a new feature that lets people feature posts on their profile,” a spokesperson from Meta confirmed TechCrunch in an email. Instagram already offers the option for users to pin Stories to their page. This new feature would allow users to prioritize content by spotlighting a given post. TikTok has a similar tool allowing users can pin selected videos to the top of their profile. Reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi first noticed the ...

More than 10 million people have streamed games over Xbox Cloud Gaming, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. Cloud gaming is a feature that’s only available as part of the $14.99 per month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate tier, so the figure shared Tuesday indicates that a lot of people are checking it out. It’s also a concrete stat in a field where there have been few — Google doesn’t break out numbers for Stadia, and any numbers shared by Nvidia for GeForce Now include people who have used a no-strings-attached free trial. Game Pass has proven to be popular, as Microsoft said in January that the service grew to have 25 million subscribers, which was up from 18 million the year before. That said, it’s unclear how Microsoft is defining what coun...

Fidelity will soon start allowing eligible individuals to save a portion of their 401(k) in Bitcoin, the company announced Tuesday. Employees will only gain access to the option if their employer signs off the option, which Fidelity says will start rolling out in mid-2022. While Fidelity doesn’t specify how much employees can dedicate to cryptocurrency in its release, the Wall Street Journal reports that employees can elect to save up to 20 percent of their retirement fund in Bitcoin. Dave Gray, Fidelity’s head of workplace retirement offerings and platforms, also told the WSJ that Fidelity plans on adding support for other cryptocurrencies at some point in the future. MicroStrategy is the first to announce that it has adopted the Bitcoin retirement fund “As a leader in digital assets, we ...

We’re now getting a look at what the leaked Pixel Watch looks like strapped to somebody’s wrist, courtesy of Reddit user tagtech414, who’s previously shared alleged images of Google’s as-yet-unannounced wearable (via 9to5Google). In the previous pictures, we could only see the little computer puck itself, not attached to a strap. While tagtech414 doesn’t seem to have successfully booted the device yet, they’ve given us a better idea of what it might be like to actually wear it. According to tagtech’s Reddit post, the strap is “kind of a pain to attach the first time,” but the connection feels solid when it’s on there. Based on the images and tagtech’s description of a strap that’s “a soft silicone with good flex and doesn’t seem to show fingerprints/oil too badly,” it sounds similar ...

Robert Pattinson’s Batman will make a return, as Warner Bros. is making a sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman. Deadline reports Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group exec Toby Emmerich announced the new film at CinemaCon on Tuesday. While my colleague Charles Pulliam-Moore felt that the film was “one of the lesser entries, substance-wise, in the grand Batman cinematic canon,” it has proven to be a hit. The movie earned $760 million at the global box office and was watched by 4.1 million households on HBO Max the first week it was available, according to Deadline. (The movie came to the streaming service earlier this month.) Both Reeves and Pattinson will be back for the new movie, though there aren’t many other details known just yet. But the film isn’t the only thing to look forward to in Reeve...

Subaru has announced the pricing of its first all-electric vehicle, the Solterra SUV. The vehicle, which comes standard with all-wheel drive like most Subarus, will start at $44,995, with the “Limited” and “Touring” trims starting at $48,495 and $51,995, respectively. All models will have an extra $1,225 destination and delivery charge, bumping their cost out the door up a bit more. The Solterra will have an “up to a 228-mile” range, according to Subaru, and will be able to charge 80 percent of its battery in under an hour. While the Limited and Touring models add features like roof rails, wireless charging, and a glass roof, there’s currently not an option to add more range to the vehicle — something that many other manufacturers offer. As someone loyal to their Subaru Outback, that’s a b...

Most people who use smartwatches and other wearable devices that can track health are white, well-educated, and wealthy. That’s not because other groups aren’t interested in using the devices to keep tabs on their fitness, heart rate, or other metrics, according to a new study. It’s just that the cost of these devices is too high. That leaves lower-income groups and racial minority groups excluded from research studies that use wearable data. The study was conducted by researchers at the All of Us Research Program, an initiative at the National Institutes of Health aiming to build a health database that’s representative of the United States. The team is purposefully seeking to include groups historically underrepresented in medical research. As part of the program, the researchers wanted t...

Microsoft’s third quarter 2022 financial results are here, and the company’s posting double-digit growth yet again: revenue of $49.4 billion and net income of $16.7 billion. Revenue is up 18 percent, and the profit represents an 8 percent jump year over year. Microsoft is crediting a chunk of this quarter’s growth to the cloud, with server and cloud services revenue up 29 percent specifically, and Microsoft Cloud up 32 percent to $23.4 billion. There was plenty of reason to suspect Microsoft would still sport a smile this quarter. While the PC industry has started to decline from its pandemic highs, it was flagging Chromebook sales — not Microsoft Windows machines — that were responsible for the entirety of the recent dip. Meanwhile, the Xbox just had its best sales in 11 years, handily be...

Here’s the situation: you’re typing a report for work, and you suddenly have to write the phrase “Jones née Berkowitz.” Or you are adding a phrase in Spanish and need to use the word “años.” How do you add the special characters to the letters with your Windows 11 PC? Special characters (also known as diacritical marks) may be more common in certain languages, but there are plenty of circumstances in which English speakers may need to use them. But because they are so rare in English, native English speakers may not have learned how to add those marks to documents, emails, or other writings. It’s not difficult to add them to your Windows document, although it’s not quite as smooth an operation as on a Mac, where all you have to do is hold the appropriate key down. (In fact, once upon a tim...

At first glance, there’s nothing obviously special about mechanical keyboard retailer Drop’s new collection of keycaps. There’s one white set with black lettering, one black set with white letting, and one more colorful set with a combination of yellow, blue, red, and white keycaps. They’re so understated that they almost look identical to what you’d find on an off-the-shelf keyboard, rather than the wacky designs that aftermarket keycaps are generally known for. But look beyond their color, and you’ll start to see the evidence of months of painstaking toil and over $1.5 million in development work. These seemingly ordinary keycaps are the first to use Drop’s new DCX profile, an ambitious attempt by the company to compete with a manufacturer widely seen as producing the gold standard in af...