Foldable phones are no longer a gimmick — they’re here to stay, and they’re better than ever. Whether you love the nostalgia of a flip phone or want the versatility of a near tablet-sized display that fits in your pocket, today’s new foldable devices are packed with cutting-edge tech. Brands like Samsung, Google and Motorola are leading the charge, pushing the boundaries of what a smartphone can do with sleek designs, powerful AI features and seamless multitasking.
Unlike traditional smartphones, foldable phones give you the best of both worlds: a compact form factor when you need portability and a big screen when you want to stream, game or get work done. Plus, with advancements in durability, better outer screens and flagship-level specs, these phones are more practical than ever. Whether you’re eyeing the latest Samsung phones or curious about what’s next for foldables, we’ve rounded up the best options to help you decide.
Note: For this guide, we’re focusing on devices that are widely available in North America and Europe. That’s because while there are even more options for people who live in Asia (especially China), they are often difficult to buy from abroad and may not support your local carriers.
When evaluating new foldable phones, we consider the same general criteria as we do when we’re judging the best smartphones. Devices need to have good battery life (at least a full day’s use), bright inner displays (peaks of at least 1,000 nits), sharp cameras and responsive performance. That said, foldable phones come in different shapes (and sizes); there are varying designs that may appeal to different types of people.
For those who prefer more compact and stylish devices, flip phone-style foldables resemble old-school namesakes but with flexible interior displays (typically six to seven inches diagonally) and smaller outer screens, often referred to as the cover display. Alternatively, for power users and people who want to maximize mobile productivity, there are larger book-style foldables (with seven to eight-inch main displays) that can transform from a candy bar-style phone to essentially a small tablet when opened.
Are foldable phones worth it? A note on durability
Aside from their displays, the biggest difference between foldable phones and more traditional handsets is durability. That’s because while some models like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung’s foldables offer IPX8 water resistance (which is good for submersions of up to five feet for 30 minutes), their flexible screens – which are largely made from plastic – present some unique challenges.
Most foldables come with factory-installed screen protectors. However, unlike regular phones, users are instructed not to remove them without assistance from approved service centers. Thankfully, Samsung phones do offer one free screen protector replacement for its foldables, while Google charges between $29 and $129 depending on the warranty status of your device. That said, while we can’t do long-term testing for every new foldable phone on the market, after personally using the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Fold 4 each for a year, I’ve found that Samsung’s pre-installed screen protector tends to start bubbling nine to 12 months after purchase. So you’ll probably want to factor in that your foldable may need some sort of servicing after about a year unless you plan on removing the screen protector entirely (which is possible, but goes against most manufacturers’ instructions).
Furthermore, foldable phone owners need to be mindful about keeping sharp objects away from their flexible displays, as rocks, keys or even pressing down very hard with a fingernail can leave permanent marks. In the event that you need to get a flexible screen serviced, you’re potentially facing a much higher repair bill when compared to a typical phone (up to $500 or more depending on the model and the severity of the damage). In short, while the ruggedness of foldable phones has improved a lot, they’re still more delicate than traditional handsets, which is something you need to account for.
However, foldables continue to evolve, with better AI features, improved specs and a more refined form factors that makes them even more practical. Whether you’re after a flip phone for nostalgia or a big screen device for multitasking, today’s foldable phones offer exciting possibilities — you just have to decide if they’re the right fit for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/best-foldable-phones-160030013.html?src=rss
Most microSD cards are fast enough for boosting storage space and making simple file transfers, but some provide a little more value than others. If you’ve got a device that still accepts microSD cards — whether it’s a gaming handheld, a dash cam, a drone or an Android tablet — we’ve scoured the market and put more than a dozen top contenders through a number of benchmark tests. You can find our top recommendations below, alongside some general shopping advice before you grab one.
The first thing to figure out when buying a microSD card is how much storage space you need. Modern cards are usually available in sizes ranging from 32GB to 512GB, with several models now available in 1TB or 1.5TB capacities as well. The first 2TB cards from major brands have started to arrive in recent months as well, which is exciting, but those are still fairly rare (and very expensive) by comparison.
For most, a 128GB or 256GB model should be a sweet spot between price and storage space. But if you need more room — say, for stashing a bunch of games on a Steam Deck — a 512GB card or greater could make more sense and often provides a better cost-per-GB ratio. These days, you can find a decent 128GB card for around $15 or less, a good 256GB card for less than $30 and a solid 512GB card for less than $40 (with faster models priced a little higher). There’s a starker increase when you go up to 1TB cards, which often cost closer to $100, though we’ve seen some fall into the $70 to $80 range within the last year. The first wave of 2TB cards are an even bigger leap: the 2TB SanDisk Extreme, for example, is priced at $200.
Note that a microSD card’s performance may differ depending on what capacity you buy. SanDisk says its 128GB Extreme card delivers sequential write speeds up to 90 MB/s, for example, while the higher-capacity models in the same line offer up to 130 MB/s.
When we talk about microSD cards today, we usually refer to cards that use the microSDXC (eXtended Capacity) standard, which have a capacity between 32GB and 2TB. Your device needs to support this for it to work with a microSDXC card. This will almost never be an issue these days, but some older devices (a Nintendo 3DS, for instance) are only compatible with microSDHC (High Capacity) cards, which range from 2GB to 32GB.
Read and write speeds
MicroSD cards are primarily judged on their read and write speeds, which are usually measured in megabytes per second (MB/s). Generally, most microSD cards have faster read speeds than write speeds.
These metrics can then be broken down into sequential and random performance. Sequential read and write speeds matter when you’re trying to access or save long, constant streams of data, such as opening a large video or copying a big batch of files from a PC. If you want to use a microSD card for media storage, this is particularly important. Random performance, meanwhile, is about how quickly a card can read and write small files scattered throughout the device.
Since random read/write speeds are much lower than sequential ones, storage device makers tend not to advertise them as loudly. But they’re important if you use a card with a gaming device or a single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi, where it often has to rapidly save and access small bits of data in random locations.
Speed ratings
If you look at a microSD card, you’ll see a buffet of numbers, letters and symbols. Most of these refer to the card’s speed class and performance ratings, which are determined by the SD Association.
A card’s Video Speed Class, or V-rating, details its minimum sequential write speed, which is especially important when recording video from a camera. It ranges from V6 to V90. Most of the cards we tested had a V30 rating, so they have a sequential write speed of at least 30 MB/s. This should be enough to support up to 4K video at lower bitrates. Higher-rated V60 and V90 cards are usually better for capturing 8K, but they come at a much higher cost.
The UHS Speed Class, or U-rating, also refers to a card’s minimum sequential write speed. It comes in two varieties: U3, which mandates a minimum of 30 MB/s, and U1, which is rated for 10 MB/s.
The older Speed Class rating overlaps with the other two systems. It’s signified by a C symbol and goes from Class 2 to Class 10, with the number (again) indicating minimum sequential write speed. This rating is less relevant nowadays, but you may still see a “C10” logo on some cards.
The Application Performance spec, marked by an A symbol, is an indicator of random read/write speeds. This is measured in IOPS, or input/output operations per second, rather than MB/s. There are two categories here: A1 cards offer a minimum random read speed of 1,500 IOPS and a minimum random write speed of 500 IOPS, while A2 cards bump those up to 4,000 IOPS and 2,000 IOPS, respectively. Both ratings also guarantee sequential write speeds of at least 10 MB/s.
To keep it simple, most people should look for a card with V30, U3 and A2 ratings. It’s totally possible to get a solid card without those: A U1 card might be worth it if you just need a cheap, high-capacity option, for example. V60 and V90 cards are worth a look if you’re serious about shooting high-resolution photos and video as well. But overall, cards with the certifications above should provide the best blend of price and performance today.
It’s important to emphasize that these ratings are baselines. Most V30 cards offer significantly higher write speeds than 30 MB/s, for instance, and some A1 cards can outperform some A2 models in practice. The speeds advertised by manufacturers aren’t always 100 percent accurate, either: Sometimes the card will be slower in real-world use, other times it may actually be a bit faster.
UHS bus speeds
The other spec to note is the card’s bus interface. Most microSD cards available today are UHS-I, which have a theoretical maximum speed of 104 MB/s. There are also UHS-II cards, which have an extra row of pins on the back and can reach up to 312 MB/s. (A UHS-III standard technically exists as well but hasn’t seen wide adoption.) These are labeled on the card with a Roman numeral I or II.
UHS-II cards are usually the ones with those higher V60 or V90 ratings. If you shoot lots of 4K to 8K video or frequently use burst mode to capture ultra high-res photos, the performance gains of a good UHS-II card can save you time.
However, these are much more expensive than UHS-I cards: This 128GB Lexar Professional Gold model, for instance, is a relative bargain at $40. While that’s less than many UHS-II models we’ve seen in the past, it’s still more than double the typical price of our top pick mentioned below. You need a device that’s compatible with the UHS-II interface to see any benefits, too, and stock for UHS-II cards is generally spottier. For now, the higher speeds aren’t worth the price premium for most people, so we stuck mostly to UHS-I cards with our recommendations.
The absolute fastest microSD cards you can buy right now, though, are based on a different interface called SD Express. This has technically been around for several years and now includes its own subset of speed classes, but the gist is that it’s much faster than UHS-I or UHS-II: SanDisk’s recently released microSD Express card, which is the first commercially available model we’ve tested, advertises sequential read speeds up to 880MB/s. For context, that’s quicker than some older SSDs.
It’s a substantial upgrade that — spoiler alert — has largely held up in our testing, but just about zero popular devices natively support SD Express right now, and again, SanDisk’s card costs much more than the best UHS-I options. It’s still possible to take advantage of the boosted performance with a dedicated SD Express card reader, but that adds even more to the final cost. It’s also worth noting that SD Express cards are not backwards compatible with UHS-II (or UHS-III), so if you try to plug one into a device with a UHS-II slot, it’ll be limited to UHS-I speeds. Still, the tech should have plenty of appeal if more gadgets that support the interface do arrive. Besides SanDisk, Samsung has said it plans to release an SD Express card as well.
A note on card readers and reaching advertised speeds
While the UHS-I interface has a theoretical maximum of 104 MB/s, some UHS-I cards can exceed that speed through proprietary extensions. However, you need a compatible card reader and host device to take advantage of that extra performance. If you find a UHS-I card advertising speeds higher than 104 MB/s, this is what’s going on. You can see these limits in action with a Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck: Both of those gaming devices support the UHS-I interface but don’t go beyond its official speed, flattening any sequential gains some cards may have elsewhere. (Differences in random read and write speeds can still matter, though.) The same thing will happen if you plug a more powerful UHS-II or SD Express card into a device that doesn’t accept those interfaces.
The takeaway: Your microSD card will only be as fast as the slowest link in your chain.
Warranty
Many microSD cards are designed to be durable, with protection from water, extreme temperatures, X-rays and drops. Still, in case of catastrophe, a long warranty is always good to have. Many manufacturers offer lifetime or 10-year limited warranties, though we’ve noticed that “endurance” cards marketed to withstand more hours of writing are usually covered for a shorter period of time. For example, Samsung’s Pro Endurance, a model aimed at security cameras and other monitoring devices, comes with a five-year warranty.
Avoiding counterfeits
The memory card market has had a particular problem with scammers selling fake products. To guard against this, only buy from a known brand and a reputable retailer such as Best Buy, B&H Photo or Adorama. If you shop at Amazon, only buy if the shipper and seller is Amazon.com. (That said, a handful of users have reported receiving counterfeits even from Amazon directly in the past.) Remember: If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Be wary of any retailer offering significantly a lower price than others.
Once you receive a card, check its packaging for any irregularities. You can run benchmark tests like CrystalDiskMark or BlackMagic Disk Speed Test to verify its speeds aren’t drastically lower than what’s advertised (or possible, given its specs). You can also use software that’s designed to verify the true capacity and performance of your card, such as H2testw and FakeFlashTest.
How we test microSD cards
We’ve put close to 20 microSD cards through a series of tests to verify their sequential and random performance. These included benchmarks like CrystalDiskMark, BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, ATTO Disk Benchmark and AJA System Test, as well as a few “real-world” tests. We copied and pasted a small folder of photos about 1.15GB in size to and from each card, then did the same with a larger 12.2GB folder containing multiple file types and subfolders, timing the process each time. We also checked how each card performed on the Steam Deck, downloading games of varying sizes — including Stardew Valley, Aperture Desk Job, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Apex Legends— then timing how long it took to launch each game and load save files.
Where applicable, we used a Kingston USB 3.2 UHS-II reader to test each card on both Windows 11 and macOS Sonoma. However, if a card could be bundled with (or is specifically advertised to use) a proprietary reader, we mainly tested with that, since we figure that’s the one most interested buyers will end up using. For Windows testing, we used an Alienware gaming PC with an Intel Core i9-10900F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. For macOS, we used a 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro with an Apple M1 Pro chip, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. If a reader couldn’t connect over USB-C, we used CalDigit’s TS4 dock to test the corresponding card on the MacBook.
We tested the 128GB version of each card wherever possible, though for a few cards — SanDisk’s Extreme and Samsung’s Pro Plus and Pro Ultimate — we were only able to test higher-capacity models. We also reformatted each card before testing with the SD Association’s Memory Card Formatter tool.
Other notable microSD cards
The Samsung Pro Ultimate.
Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget
Samsung Pro Ultimate
The Samsung Pro Ultimate was the closest competitor to the Lexar Professional Silver Plus across our benchmark tests, but it’s tangible worse in terms of sequential write speeds, typically costs more and doesn’t offer a 1TB option. The Samsung Pro Plus is a bit slower for sequential reads, but it’s close enough otherwise and usually easier to find at a lower price.
Kingston Canvas Go Plus
The Kingston Canvas Go Plus is a fine card and worth buying over the Samsung Evo Select if the two are ever available for the same price, but its sequential write speeds lagged well behind the Lexar Silver Plus and, to a slightly lesser extent, Samsung Pro Plus.
The SanDisk Extreme and PNY Elite-X.
Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget
Delkin Devices Power
We haven’t used it ourselves, but if you’re willing to pay for a more powerful UHS-II card built for heavy-duty video recording, the Delkin Devices Power has tested well elsewhere and should deliver significantly faster sequential write speeds than our picks above. It’s one of the few UHS-II cards we could actually find in stock, but it costs a ton, with a 128GB model normally priced around $80.
SanDisk Extreme
The SanDisk Extreme effectively matched the Pro Plus in a few of our sequential tests, but that was partly due to us only being able to secure the 256GB model, which is higher-rated than the 128GB version. It’s a fine choice if you see it on sale at a reputable seller, but it’s broadly slower than our top pick and often costs more.
The SanDisk GamePlay and SanDisk Pokémon.
Jeff Dunn for Engadget
SanDisk GamePlay
The SanDisk GamePlay performs similarly to the SanDisk Extreme but costs a good bit extra as of our latest update. We couldn’t get it to reach its advertised speeds with the company’s own “Pro” card reader or other third-party options, so it fell short of our top picks.
SanDisk Pokémon
The SanDisk Pokémon does outperform its advertised read and write speeds, but not by enough to outpace the Lexar Silver Plus or Samsung Pro Plus. It essentially charges extra for having a picture of Pikachu (or Gengar, or Snorlax) on a product you’ll never look at.
The Lexar Professional 1066x.
Photo by Jeff Dunn / Engadget
Lexar Professional 1066x
The Lexar Professional 1066x is another OK alternative to the Samsung Pro Plus if our main picks are unavailable, but its sequential reads and random speeds aren’t on par with either Samsung’s card or Lexar’s own Silver Plus. That said, it’s worth getting over the Samsung Evo Select if you see it for a lower price, as its sequential write speeds are much faster. It also comes with a lifetime limited warranty.
SanDisk Extreme Pro
The SanDisk Extreme Pro is a close analog to the Samsung Pro Ultimate but, as of this writing, is either unavailable at most trusted retailers or priced too high by comparison. The Lexar Professional Silver Plus has faster sequential write speeds as well.
PNY Elite-X
The PNY Elite-X often goes for cheap and wasn’t too far off the random read/write performance of Samsung’s Pro Plus in CrystalDiskMark, but its sequential speeds were well behind our top picks.
Recent updates
February 2025: We’ve updated this guide with a new top pick: the Lexar Professional Silver Plus. The Samsung Pro Plus, our previous recommendation, stays as a runner-up. We’ve also added SanDisk’s recently released microSD Express card as a pick for those who want the absolute fastest card possible, albeit with heavy caveats. This is one of the first microSD cards to use the SD Express bus interface, so we’ve included more details on what that entails in our “what to look for in a microSD card” section. Lastly, we’ve removed our write-up for SanDisk’s Apex Legends card, as it appears to have been discontinued, and included testing notes for a couple of the company’s more recent releases.
November 2024: We’ve checked back with this guide to ensure our recommendations are still accurate and made light edits for clarity.
August 2024: We’ve updated this guide to note the recently released 1TB models for three of our top picks: the Samsung Pro Plus, the Kingston Canvas Go Plus and the Samsung Evo Select. We’ve also made sure all pricing details are as up to date as they can be.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-microsd-card-130038282.html?src=rss
We learned in December 2022 that a production company had signed on to turn Sloclap’s excellent martial arts game Sifu into a film. Today, the news dropped that Netflix is involved with the project, which seems to have caused some personnel shuffling behind the scenes.
The initial announcement saw Story Kitchen, which has since amassed a huge catalog of video game adaptations, securing a treatment of Sifu with John Wick creator Derek Kolstad attached as the writer. Story Kitchen is still working on the film, but Kolstad is no longer serving as the screenwriter and T.S. Nowlin has instead been tapped for that role. Nowlin’s past credits include the screenplays for the Maze Runner adaptations and most recently he was a writer for Netflix’s splashy Ryan Reynolds vehicle The Adam Project.
However, there is still a John Wick connection with Sifu. The director for all four John Wick films, stunt performer Chad Stahelski, has joined the producer team, as have members of Stahelski’s 87Eleven Entertainment company.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/netflix-hops-aboard-sifu-movie-adaptation-assigns-a-screenwriter-225324526.html?src=rss
Samwise Gamgee said, “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.” But then, he hadn’t been exposed to the world of video game development. Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game, a cozy take on the most idyllic pocket of Middle Earth, has been delayed. The new launch date is July 29. According to a post from the devs at Wētā Workshop Game Studio, this delay is about ensuring that all the project’s supported platforms “can enjoy the same cozy experience.” It is currently slated to launch on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Steam and Xbox Series X.
This project has taken a couple tough hits over the past several months. The release date had already been pushed back in September, and it was axed from Netflix’s planned game lineup earlier this month. Will there be more hurdles before we can finally enjoy our happy hobbit alternate lives? As a wise wizard once said: “Who knows? Have patience.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/cozy-lord-of-the-rings-game-tales-of-the-shire-is-delayed-to-july-213500109.html?src=rss
“Unfortunately @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media,” Musk posted. “Working to fix this…” Based on the rant his tweet descends in to afterwards, his issue appears to be with how X’s Community Notes contributors have been treating misinformation about President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the war in Ukraine. Musk quotes a post from an X account that claims polls showing Zelenskyy has a 57 percent approval rating in Ukraine are “not credible.” Information like that being challenged on X doesn’t jive with President Trump’s description of Zelenskyy as a “dictator” or Musk’s desire to use the platform as an unofficial arm of the current administration.
Unfortunately, @CommunityNotes is increasingly being gamed by governments & legacy media.
Working to fix this …
It should be utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible!!
What “fixing” Community Notes will look like remains to be seen, but Musk uncritically quoting a post that cites no sources beyond an image with small text that says “Accuracy Confidence: Normal” is hopefully evidence enough that Community Notes are the bare minimum needed. Ragging on the feature of course fits the larger pattern of Musk’s tenure at X, which has been characterized by him manipulating the platform’s algorithm and eliminating features that helped determine credibility, like verification. If he thinks you can’t even trust crowdsourced fact-checks, there’s really no source of truth left on the platform.
The concept of Community Notes is no longer unique to X — Meta recently opened up the waitlist to use the feature on its platforms — but how long Community Notes exists its current form is apparently now an open question.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/elon-musk-wants-to-fix-community-notes-on-x-212310412.html?src=rss
iPhone 15 Pro owners will soon have one less reason to consider upgrading to an iPhone 16 series handset. Visual Intelligence, Apple’s equivalent to Google Lens, is coming to the 2023 Pro-series flagships, according toDaring Fireball.
Owners of the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro can trigger Visual Intelligence with a long press of their dedicated camera button. But like the recently announced iPhone 16e (which also supports the feature), the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max don’t have a physical camera button. So, all three phones will have to assign it to the Action button or use a Control Center shortcut, which will arrive in an upcoming software update.
Apple hasn’t said which iOS version will bring the Apple Intelligence visual search feature to the iPhone 15 Pro series. However, Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber suspects it will be in iOS 18.4, which could arrive “any day now” for beta testers.
Cherlynn Low for Engadget
Part of the Apple Intelligence suite of AI features, Visual Intelligence lets you point your camera at something and use AI to analyze it in real time. It does a few things on its own, but it gets more useful with info from its persistent onscreen shortcuts to ChatGPT or Google Image Search.
So, say you find a set of towels in your closet with a unique pattern. You really like those dang towels and want to buy more, but you can’t remember where you got them. Activate Visual Intelligence, choose the Google search shortcut and see if your beloved rags are among the web results that pop up. Alternatively, you could use ChatGPT to ask it about the product and where to order it.
Visual Intelligence can also do a few things without the help of Google or OpenAI. You can interact with text: translate, read aloud and summarize. Or learn about a business you point your phone toward: view its hours, menu and services or buy something from it.
So, iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max owners should get a taste of that before long. And perhaps even sooner for those willing to brave the (sometimes rough) waters of beta software.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/an-ios-update-will-give-iphone-15-pro-owners-visual-intelligence-205030298.html?src=rss
ChatGPT has surpassed 400 million weekly active users. “We feel very fortunate to serve 5 percent of the world every week,” OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said on X about the new audience stat. This figure is twice the weekly active user count reported by the company in August 2024, which was double the figure it posted in November 2023.
The latest milestone for the AI assistant comes after a huge uproar over new rival platform DeepSeek earlier in the year, which raised questions about whether the current crop of leading AI tools was about to be dethroned. OpenAI is on the verge of a move to simplify its ChatGPT offerings so that users won’t have to select which reasoning model will respond to an input, and it will make its GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models available soon in the chat and API clients. With GPT-5 being made available to OpenAI’s free users, ChatGPT seems primed to continue expanding its audience base in the coming months.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/chatgpt-reaches-400m-weekly-active-users-203635884.html?src=rss
The $599 iPhone 16e is many things, but don’t you dare call it a budget phone. I hesitate to even call it “cheap.” As a successor to the $429 iPhone SE, it’s hard not to see the 16e as a disappointment. Sure, it’s $200 less than the vanilla iPhone 16 (which I argued was a great deal at launch), and the 16e also packs in the latest A18 chip with support for Apple Intelligence. But it’s no longer a small phone, and it pushes Apple’s cheaper iPhone option well beyond $500. That’s something we’ll likely never see again. (And it’s potentially terrible news for future iPhone pricing, as well.)
Given the sheer amount of new hardware in the iPhone 16e — including a larger 6.1-inch OLED screen, Apple’s first in-house “C1” modem and that aforementioned A18 chip — it’s easy to make excuses for the price. The 16e is certainly far closer in specs to the iPhone 16 than the third-gen SE was to the iPhone 13. But I’d argue that Apple didn’t exactly need an OLED screen for this model, and there are likely other ways to cut down costs. (It’s even stranger Apple kept out MagSafe and fast wireless charging, which would have been cheaper to implement, and arguably more useful, than a large OLED display.)
Apple
And while it’s nice to have the A18 chip (albeit with one less GPU core) and full Apple Intelligence support, I agree with my colleague Igor Bonifacic that users aren’t exactly clamoring for those AI features. If we had to blame one culprit for the iPhone 16e’s pricing, though, it’s likely Apple Intelligence. After all, Apple is still fighting to prove it isn’t too far behind Microsoft, Google and OpenAI. In any other year, Apple might have been able to justify throwing an older chip in the 16e, but that’s not possible when it’s in the middle of an AI hype war.
Mostly, I’m just sad that Apple is once again raising the price of admission to its walled garden without much justification. There’s something special — noble, even — about sub-$500 smartphones. They’re a reminder of a saner era of smartphones, when prices were being driven down by phones like the Moto G. These days you’re left with Android phones like the Pixel 8a (and potentially the upcoming Pixel 9a), as well as the $400 Samsung Galaxy A35 and $499 Galaxy A55.
Apple
Now that the dream of a sub-$500 iPhone is well and truly dead, it feels like Apple is just setting the stage for future price jumps. A $600 or $650 iPhone 17e will certainly look like a deal compared to a $850 or $900 iPhone 17. And just wait for the inevitable $2,000 iPhone foldable, which could potentially be specced beyond $3,000.
Of course, you could be a smart Apple shopper and opt for used or refurbished iPhones. I recently picked up a refurbished iPhone 14 Plus as an early Mothers’ Day gift for $420, and Amazon currently has listings for iPhone 14 Pros right under $500. Those devices won’t support Apple Intelligence, but I’d argue sticking to the used market is simply a more useful form of intelligence.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/a-599-iphone-16e-is-a-cruel-joke-200507275.html?src=rss
This title keeps the core gameplay loop from the original, but shifts to a first-person perspective. It’s basically a new way to keep sabotaging your friends and family. Among Us 3D is for four to ten players and includes native proximity voice chat, with no need for a third-party platform. All of the minigames are returning, though there’s also some new ones coming down the pike. Innersloth is holding off on those details for now.
It features crossplay with Among Us VR, but not with the original game. That’s a bummer, but understandable. There will be, however, an expanded costume selection to offer “an endless number of cosmetic customization combinations.” There’s a new in-game currency called Stardust that will, presumably, be used to purchase some of those outfits.
There’s no release date yet, other than “soon.” However, a demo will be available to US players as part of Steam Next Fest from February 24 to March 3. Preorders for the full game are already live on Steam.
This is just the latest cool thing that developer Innersloth has announced. The company recently revealed a publishing arm called Outersloth. There’s also an Among Us cartoon coming sometime in the near future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/among-us-vr-is-being-transformed-into-a-traditional-3d-game-for-pc-194545497.html?src=rss
The Action button is available on nearly every iPhone Apple sells, offering a quick way to access a feature, app or shortcut on your phone, just by pushing a button. It can be a flashlight, activate a smart home routine or let you access any number of custom shortcuts without having to unlock your phone and pick through apps.
Apple added the Action Button on the iPhone 15 Pro as a replacement for the iPhone’s original Ring / Silent switch, and it was an acknowledgement of sorts that lots of people keep their phones on silent anyway. Having a reassignable button was pitched as a “Pro” feature at the time, but much like the Dynamic Island, it came to all of Apple’s other phones in short order, even the entry-level iPhone 16e.
How to use the Action Button
Apple
You can use the Action Button for yourself on an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16e just by pressing or holding down the small button above the volume up and down buttons on the left side of your phone. By default, the Action Button will mute or unmute your text and ringtones. This fills the same role as the old Ring / Silent switch. Heading into the Settings app will let you reassign it to another task and you can silence your phone via the Control Center.
How to reassign the Action Button to Flashlight
Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget
Out of the box, Apple lets you assign the Action button to several different controls: Silent Mode (Ring / Silent), Focus (either a specific Focus or a menu that lets you pick each time), Camera (a specific mode like Photo or Video), Flashlight, Voice Memo, Recognize Music, Translate, Magnifier, Controls (a specific control from Control Center like Airplane Mode), Shortcut, Accessibility (toggling a specific accessibility feature) or do nothing at all.
If you wanted to switch from the default, Silent Mode, to the Flashlight, you need to first unlock your phone. Then:
Open the Settings app.
Tap on “Action Button.”
From there, swipe through the different options until you land on Flashlight.
To test that it worked, try pressing on the Action Button.
You can use this same process to reassign the Action Button to any of the built-in actions Apple provides.
How to make the Action Button open an app
Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget
If you’d like to get a little more adventurous, you can also have the Action Button open a specific app on your phone. Let’s say, for example, your go-to game on the iPhone is Balatro. You can have the Action Button automatically pull up Balatro whenever you press it.
To set it up, you’ll need your iPhone unlocked.
Open the Settings app.
Tap on “Action Button.”
Swipe through the options until you reach “Shortcut.”
Tap on “Choose a Shortcut…”
Then tap on “Open App…”
Then scroll until you find your chosen app and tap on it.
This process works for any app on your phone, including features of specific apps, like if you wanted to jump directly into ChatGPT’s Voice Mode or a new note in the Notes app.
How to make the Action button activate a shortcut
Ian Carlos Campbell for Engadget
The Shortcut action works for more complicated Apple Shortcuts, too. Technically, any shortcut designed to be triggered by you choosing to activate it (as opposed to a time or location-based shortcut) works. There’s a lot of interesting shortcuts out there, and plenty of custom ones you can make on your own, but to use a simple example, here’s how you’d set the Action Button to start a Pomodoro timer.
Open the Settings app.
Tap on “Action Button.”
Swipe through the options until you get to “Shortcut.”
Tap on “Choose a Shortcut…”
Tap on whatever shortcut you want activate.
Press and hold the Action Button to make sure it works.
In the case of the Pomodoro timer, you’ll be prompted to choose how long you want the timer to last, and then you can tap “Done” to start it.
Between lock screen widgets and app shortcuts, home screen widgets, and the Action Button, there’s now multiple ways to check information inside of an app, adjust a specific setting or use specific functionality from the apps on your iPhone. It’s confusing, but a good rule of thumb is that the Action Button works best for actions that you only need to enable once or binary, on / off features. Plenty of others things work, but at a certain point you’ll want to be spending time in an app instead of futzing with the buttons on your phone.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/how-to-make-the-most-of-the-iphones-action-button-193038089.html?src=rss
The Amazon Appstore will no longer be available on Android as of August 20, 2025. After that date, apps from the digital storefront “are not guaranteed to operate” on Android hardware; however, they can continue to be used on devices like the Fire TV and Fire Tablets. The Coins program, Amazon’s virtual currency for some Appstore app and in-app purchases, will also end on that same date. Coins will no longer be available for purchase beginning today.
The Appstore was Amazon’s effort to get in on the app distribution game for Android. Third-party app stores have been a hot topic for the business world in recent years, with the owners of walled gardens insisting that everything is fair while the companies trying to get a share of the action for themselves insist that it’s not. There have been mixed moves to address the question in the US government, while regions such as the EU have taken more decisive steps to increase competition.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/amazon-is-shutting-down-its-third-party-android-app-store-192047953.html?src=rss
After announcing its plan to end third-party fact-checking in January 2025, Meta’s crowdsourced replacement is finally starting to take shape. You can now join a waitlist to be a Community Notes contributor on Facebook, Instagram and Threads when the feature rolls out in the coming months.
Contributors are expect to provide context via a note when a post on one of Meta’s platforms “might be inaccurate or confusing,” according to the company’s sign-up page. Community Notes will be able to be added to “most public content across Facebook, Instagram and Threads” and must be 500 characters or fewer. Any note is also subject to Meta’s Community Standards and the judgment of other contributors. Meta expects contributors to rate notes so that the correct context gets displayed under posts.
To sign-up, you need to be based in the US, be over the age of 18, have a Meta account that’s more than six months old and in good standing and have either a verified phone number or two-factor authentication. Meta says contributors will start to be taken off the waitlist once the Community Notes beta launches. The company hasn’t given a hard date for the launch, but does mention that Community Notes will be phased in “over the next few months.”
Meta started testing Community Notes on Threads a little over a month ago. The feature, in name and basic functionality, is inspired by X’s Community Notes, which originally launched in 2022 when the company was still known as Twitter. Community Notes and other crowdsourced pseudo-fact checks have been tested on Google platforms like YouTube and Search as well, and they all have the same general weakness. A crowdsourced answer doesn’t come with the same guarantee of accuracy as one provided by someone whose sole job it is to be an impartial fact-checker.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/you-can-now-sign-up-to-be-a-contributor-to-metas-community-notes-feature-190814234.html?src=rss
A day after it was reported that Denis Villeneuve’s third Dune movie starts shooting this summer, developer Funcom announced that its open-world MMO Dune: Awakening arrives on May 20 for PC. You can even get a jump on your journey through Arrakis with a character creator that’s available today.
Dune: Awakening draws inspiration from Frank Herbert’s novels and the 2020s films. (Sorry, no speedo-clad Sting in this one.) However, it takes some detours from the established canon. In the game’s version of Dune’s world, the Fremen have vanished, Paul Atreides was never born and Lady Jessica obeyed the Bene Gesserit’s instructions to give birth to a girl. (In other words, she’s a total square.)
So, in addition to being a bit of a “What If?” version of the Duniverse, it gives the developers freedom to use familiar environments and characters without having to tread too closely to the lore of the books and films. Handy!
Funcom
Funcom says you start as a prisoner sent to Arrakis to investigate the Fremen’s disappearance. “Following in the footsteps of the mysterious desert tribe, you will learn the true meaning of desert power as you rise from a nameless survivor to becoming an agent of the Atreides or the Harkonnen,” the game blurb reads.
The character creator you can tinker with today lets you tweak your hero’s looks and choose their home planet, caste and mentor (Swordmaster, Bene Gesserit, Mentat or Trooper). True to Dune form, your protagonist will have to put their hand in the box and take the dreaded Gom Jabbar test. (Fortunately, your hand will be on a keyboard or controller, not inside a sci-fi torture test.) You can use your custom character when the full game launches.
The tool also includes a benchmark mode, so you’ll know whether you need to invest in new PC hardware to play the survival game when it arrives.
Dune: Awakening launches on May 20 on Steam. It costs $50, and pre-orders will open soon. The game is also coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, but there’s no release date for the console versions yet. You can check out the latest trailer below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/dune-awakening-will-spice-things-up-on-may-20-184552623.html?src=rss
It’s been ten long years since Avatar: The Legend of Korra aired its final episode and over 15 years since Avatar: The Last Airbender bowed out. Now, finally, Nickelodeon has greenlit a sequel series and it sounds pretty awesome. Deadline reports that Avatar: Seven Havens will be a 2D animated 26-episode followup that chronicles the rise of the next Avatar after Korra.
Franchise creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko are developing the series, so we know it’s in good hands. The plot sounds pretty dark. It seems the world has fallen into chaos following a cataclysmic event of some kind. The titular “seven havens” refer to a handful of small civilizations that have managed to weather the storm.
Also, the next Avatar will be a female Earthbender. In this world, however, the Avatar is reviled and seen as a harbinger of doom instead of a hero. That’s an interesting twist.
“This new incarnation of the Avatarverse is full of fantasy, mystery and a whole new cast of amazing characters. Get ready to take another epic and emotional adventure,” DiMartino and Konietzko said in a statement.
The premiere date and casting information will be released later in the year. We do know that the 26 episodes will be split into two books, or seasons, which is similar to how the original shows handled things. It remains to be seen if the series will cap out at 26 episodes or if that’s just the first two chapters. Personally, I wonder if any aged Korra characters will show up.
The announcement of Avatar: Seven Havens is just the latest news from the franchise. DiMartino and Konietzko are also working on a trilogy of animated movies, with the first one centering on an adult Aang and friends. That one hits theaters on January 30, 2026. Of course, the Netflix live-action adaptation of the original series still has two more seasons to go.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/theres-a-new-avatar-the-last-airbender-cartoon-coming-to-nickelodeon-182956881.html?src=rss
Time (and perhaps a large check or two) heals all wounds. Amazon and the longtime producers and custodians of the James Bond movies have finally agreed on a way forward for the series. Amazon MGM Studios will form a joint venture with Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli that will hold the intellectual property rights and ensure they remain co-owners of the franchise. However, Wilson and Broccoli will be stepping back to focus on other projects, with Amazon gaining full creative control.
The company bought MGM in 2022 for $8.45 billion to get its hands on a renowned film studio with a vast library of film and TV episodes. Co-ownership of the Bond series was a big part of that. However, production of Bond movies had been on hold amid reports of a power struggle between Amazon and Broccoli, who is said to have felt that an ecommerce giant was not the right fit for her family’s franchise (she inherited the series from her father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who died in 1996).
Until now, Broccoli and her half-brother Wilson had retained creative control. She and her family have been very protective of the series and its legacy. Broccoli reportedly rebuffed most of Amazon’s attempts to develop spinoffs, save for the reality competition series 007: Road to a Million. But that’s about to change with Amazon seemingly eager to propel the series forward before Ian Fleming’s Bond novels fully enter the public domain in a decade — allowing anyone to publish their own adaptations of them.
“My life has been dedicated to maintaining and building upon the extraordinary legacy that was handed to Michael and me by our father, producer Cubby Broccoli,” Broccoli said in a statement. “I have had the honor of working closely with four of the tremendously talented actors who have played 007 and thousands of wonderful artists within the industry. With the conclusion of No Time to Die and Michael retiring from the films, I feel it is time to focus on my other projects.”
On one hand, the series will be exiting the limbo it’s been in since Daniel Craig stepped away from the role after 2021’s No Time To Die. We might finally learn who the next James Bond is in the near future. On the other, there’s no telling how Amazon might dilute the prestige quality of the franchise with spinoffs and more projects like the game show Brian Cox didn’t realize he was signing up to host.
The movies have a tradition of product placement from luxury brands, and we could see Amazon replacing the likes of LG monitors with, say, Echo Show displays. And if ever there was an opportunity for Amazon to create and market its own smartwatch…
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/amazon-will-take-full-creative-control-of-the-james-bond-franchise-174255959.html?src=rss
The Pokémon Company is hosting a morning livestream on February 27 at 9AM ET to share the “latest news and updates” from Pikachu and pals. You can stream it via the official YouTube channel. This is the yearly Pokémon Presents event that typically provides info on what’s coming to empty our wallets throughout the year (and beyond.)
So what can we expect this year? Both The Pokémon Company and Nintendo remain tight-lipped, but we can make some educated guesses. Pokemon Legends: Z-A, the follow-up to the open-world Pokémon Legends: Arceus, was announced in early 2024. It’s high time we got some more details on the upcoming game.
The title was originally advertised as a Switch exclusive, but now that the Switch 2 is on our radar, maybe it’ll be a dual-release or something. We could get that information, along with an announcement regarding the game’s trio of starter Pokémon.
There’s a new Pokémon TGC set arriving in May. It’s called Destined Rivals, so we can expect a detailed look at this update. We might even get a tease for another set down the line. Pokémon cards, both digital and physical, are still very much a big deal. To that end, we could get details regarding new features for TGC Pocket.
Pokémon GO’s next season starts on March 4, which is just a few days after the stream. We’ll most definitely get a trailer for that, along with some updates on any new features. Beyond that, it’s a guessing game. Hope springs eternal that we’ll finally get those remakes of Pokémon Black and White. In any event, February 27 is right around the corner.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/theres-a-pokemon-presents-livestream-scheduled-for-february-27-171813096.html?src=rss
The Google Pixel 8a mid-tier smartphone is back on sale for $399 via Amazon. This is close to a record-low price and represents a discount of 20 percent. Even better? The sale applies to multiple colorways, including mint green, light blue and white. This deal is for the 128GB model.
This device topped our list of the best mid-range smartphones, and with good reason. It’s a well-designed phone that gets the job done. It features a powerful Tensor G3 chip, offers support for Google Gemini AI tools and includes an excellent camera system. The 120Hz OLED display is gorgeous and the battery life is on point.
We called the Pixel 8a “one of the best values of any phone on sale today” in our official review, and that was at the original $499 asking price. It’s especially well-valued with today’s sale. We even enjoyed gaming with this device, which isn’t always the case with mid-range phones. The 8a also comes with IP67 dust and water resistance and 7.5-watt Qi wireless charging.
There aren’t any major downsides to this phone, though we do have a couple of nitpicks. The wireless charging, while convenient, is pretty slow. The display bezels are also on the thicker side, so you lose some precious screen real estate. Other than that, this is a near-perfect mid-range phone. It’s also a full $200 cheaper than Apple’s just-announced “budget” smartphone, the iPhone 16e.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/googles-pixel-8a-drops-to-399-at-amazon-163059224.html?src=rss
While there’s a new iPhone that’s surely soaking up the attention of many Apple fans, it’s often worth keeping an eye on the company’s other products as you might find a decent deal. If you’ve been on the lookout for a discount on the latest Mac mini, you’re in luck. The M4 Mac mini is back on sale as it has dropped to $549.
The deal is for the base model with 16GB of unified memory and 256GB of SSD storage. It’s not the lowest price we’ve seen for this Mac mini — it was $100 off during the Black Friday period. But with a $50 discount, this is the best price we’ve seen so far this year.
If you’d like more built-in storage, you might want to opt for a configuration with a 512GB SSD. That’ll currently run you $719, which is $80 off the regular price. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that you can connect an external SSD to your Mac mini if Apple’s internal storage upgrade prices are too pricey for you to justify.
We gave the Mac mini (albeit one equipped with a more powerful M4 Pro chipset) a score of 90 in our review. That said, the base M4 model should be zippy enough for most people’s needs. For instance, those who like to play games on Mac should find that the GPU is fast enough to support 60 fps gameplay at a resolution of 1080p on many titles.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/apples-m4-mac-mini-is-back-on-sale-for-549-161512511.html?src=rss
On the Friday after Christmas, OpenAI published a blog post titled “Why OpenAI’s structure must evolve to advance our mission.” In it, the company detailed a plan to reorganize its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation (PBC). In the weeks since that announcement, I’ve spoken to some of the country’s leading corporate law experts to gain a better understanding of OpenAI’s plan, and, more importantly, what it might mean for its mission to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI).
What is a public benefit corporation?
“Public benefit corporations are a relatively recent addition to the universe of business entity types,” says Jens Dammann, professor of corporate law at the University of Texas School of Law. Depending on who you ask, you may get a different history of PBCs, but in the dominant narrative, they came out of a certification program created by a nonprofit called B Lab. Companies that complete a self-assessment and pay an annual fee to B Lab can carry the B Lab logo on their products and websites and call themselves B-Corps. Critically, B Corp status isn’t a designation with the weight of law, or even an industry-wide group, behind it — it’s a stamp of approval from this specific nonprofit.
As a result, B Lab eventually felt the certification program “was not enough,” says Professor Michael Dorff, executive director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy at UCLA. “They wanted something more permanent and more rooted in the law.” So the organization began working with legal experts to create a model statute for what would become the benefit corporation. B Lab lobbied state legislatures to pass laws recognizing benefit corporations as legal entities, and in 2010, Maryland became the first state to do so. In 2013, Delaware enacted its own version of the law. To make things somewhat confusing, the state went with a different name: the public benefit corporation.
Delaware is arguably the most important state for corporate law in the US, thanks to the Delaware Chancery Court and its body of business-friendly case law. As of 2022, 68.2 percent of all Fortune 500 companies, including many tech giants, are incorporated in the state despite largely operating elsewhere. Delaware is also the state where OpenAI plans to reincorporate its for-profit as a PBC.
The basic idea behind public benefit corporations is that they’re business entities that impose a constraint on their board to balance profit maximization, a public benefit that’s stated in the charter of the company, and the concerns of people impacted by its conduct.
“It’s a bit of a paradigm shift,” says Professor Dammann, but don’t confuse a PBC with a nonprofit. “The key characteristic of a nonprofit is what we call a non-distribution constraint, meaning if a nonprofit makes a profit, they can’t distribute it to their shareholders,” Professor Dammann says. “If you form a public benefit corporation, there’s no such non-distribution constraint. At its heart, a PBC is still a for-profit corporation.”
Why is OpenAI pursuing a PBC structure?
First and foremost, a PBC structure — whether it’s private or selling share on the open market — would get OpenAI out from under that non-distribution constraint. But there are likely some other considerations at play.
OpenAI hasn’t publicly said this, but it appears some of its employees believe a PBC structure could protect the company from a hostile takeover if it were to go public. In a recent Financial Times report, a source within the company said a PBC structure would give OpenAI a “safe harbor” if a rival firm were to try to buy the company. It “gives you even more flexibility to say ‘thanks for calling and have a nice day’,” the person said.
The specific threat OpenAI likely wants safe harbor from is what’s known as the Revlon doctrine, which is named after a 1986 Delaware Supreme Court case involving the cosmetics company Revlon Inc. and now defunct supermarket chain Pantry Pride, then led by CEO Ronald Perelman. “The Revlon doctrine holds that if you’re a publicly traded corporation [incorporated in Delaware] and somebody stages a takeover attempt, then under certain conditions, you have to sell to the highest bidder,” says Professor Dammann.
The underlying rationale behind Revlon is that a for-profit company’s sole function is to generate profits, so the board is forced to make whatever choice will return the most money to shareholders.
“We don’t know for sure, but we’re fairly confident that the Revlon doctrine doesn’t apply to public benefit corporations,” says Professor Dammann. Theoretically, PBC boards may have the flexibility to reject a takeover bid if they believe a buyer won’t adhere to the social values the company was founded on. However, because “none of this has been litigated,” according to Professor Dorff, it remains a purely hypothetical defense.
Moreover, it’s unclear if reorganizing as a PBC would offer OpenAI more protection against a hostile takeover attempt than what it already has as a nonprofit. “I don’t think this has been tested with this particular kind of structure, but my sense is that the nonprofit would not be obligated to sell even in a Revlon moment,” says Professor Dorff.
“We need to raise more capital”
OpenAI
Publicly, OpenAI has said it needs to secure more investment, and that its current structure is holding it back. “We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined,” OpenAI wrote in December, two months after securing $6 billion in new venture funding. “Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.”
Unpacking what the company likely means by “structural bespokeness” requires a short history lesson. In 2019, when OpenAI originally created its for-profit arm, it organized the company using a unique “capped-profit” structure. The company said it would limit investor returns to 100x, with excess returns going to the nonprofit. “We expect this multiple to be lower for future rounds as we make further progress,” OpenAI added.
It’s fair to be critical of the company’s claims. “You’d have to ask the investors, but I have to say that 100x is an exceptional rate or return, so the idea that you cannot get investment because of a 100x cap seems rich to me,” says Professor Dorff. In fact, there are suggestions OpenAI was already making itself more attractive to investors before announcing its reorganization plan in December. In 2023, The Economist reported that the company changed its cap to increase (and not decrease as OpenAI had originally said it would) by 20 percent per year starting in 2025. At this time, OpenAI does not expect to be profitable until 2029, and racked up about $5 billion in losses last year.
“We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing structure we know of strikes the right balance,” OpenAI said in 2019. At that point, Delaware’s PBC legislation had been law for nearly six years. However, the company is now arguing that a PBC structure would “enable us to raise the necessary capital with conventional terms like others in this space.”
In OpenAI’s defense, calling its current structure convoluted would be an understatement. As you can see from the company’s own org chart, there are two other entities under the OpenAI umbrella, including a holding company that’s an intermediary between the nonprofit and for-profit. Engadget was able to find at least 11 different Delaware companies registered to OpenAI. George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult and other members of the Author’s Guild probably described it best in their copyright lawsuit against the company, calling OpenAI “a tangled thicket of interlocking entities that generally keep from the public what the precise relationships among them are and what function each entity serves within the larger corporate structure.”
OpenAI did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Engadget.
“A stronger nonprofit supported by the for-profit’s success”
Reuters
OpenAI’s nonprofit arm does essentially two things: controls the for-profit side’s business, and exists as a “vehicle” to develop “safe and broadly beneficial AGI” (artificial general intelligence).
According to the company, its current structure does not allow its nonprofit arm to “easily do more than control the for-profit.” If it were freed of that responsibility — by say, handing it off to investors — OpenAI suggests its nonprofit could focus its resources on charitable initiatives, all while becoming “one of the best-resourced nonprofits in history.”
To remedy the situation, OpenAI’s board says the nonprofit should give up absolute control over the for-profit and take whatever degree of control comes with the amount of stock it’s granted through the reorganization process. “The nonprofit’s significant interest in the existing for-profit would take the form of shares in the PBC at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors,” OpenAI says of this part of its plan.
Professor Dorff argues who controls OpenAI is critical to the company maintaining its mission. The move to reorganize the for-profit as a PBC is not controversial. “Companies do it all the time; there’s a straightforward and clear process to do that,” he tells me. “What is controversial is what they’re trying to do to change the nature of the nonprofit’s ownership interest in the for-profit.”
At the risk of oversimplifying things, OpenAI’s board of directors wants to divest the company’s nonprofit of two of its most important assets: control of the for-profit and its rights to the profits from AGI. “You can’t just do that,” says Professor Dorff. “The assets of the nonprofit must remain dedicated to the purpose of the nonprofit.” There are rules that allow nonprofits to modify their purpose if their original one is made defunct, but those won’t apply to OpenAI since we’re not living in a world with safe (or any) AGI.
Think of it this way, what is the value of artificial general intelligence? It’s not a traditional asset like real estate or the EVs sold by Tesla. AGI, as defined by OpenAI, doesn’t yet and may never exist. “One could imagine it’s worth all the labor of the economy because it could eventually replace human labor,” says Professor Dorff. Whatever the eventual value of the technology, Professor Dorff says he’s unsure “any number would enable the nonprofit to do what it’s supposed to do without control.”
No matter how OpenAI spins it, any version of this plan would result in a massive loss of control for the current nonprofit entity and its board.
One more thing
Something the experts I spoke to agreed on was that the laws governing PBCs aren’t very effective at ensuring companies stick to their social purpose. “The legal constraints aren’t very strict,” Professor Dammann says, adding, “the problem with a very broad public benefit is that it’s not so constraining anymore. If you’re dedicated to a very broad version of the public good, then you can always defend every decision, right?”
“The dual goal of profit and public purpose doesn’t really tell you how a company is going to manage those objectives,” says Jill Fisch, professor of Business Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “To the extent that public purpose sacrifices profits, and it doesn’t have to, but to the extent that it does, how much of a sacrifice is contemplated?”
“What matters a lot in PBC governance is what the private arrangements are,” Professor Dorff adds. “That is, what do the documents say?” A company’s certificate of incorporation, shareholder agreements and bylaws can provide “very robust” (or very few) mechanisms to ensure it sticks to its social purpose. As Professor Dorff points out, OpenAI’s blog post said “nothing about those.”
Contrast that with when OpenAI announced its “capped profit” plan. It gave us a glimpse of some of its paperwork, sharing a clause it said was at the start of all of its employee and investor agreements. That snippet made it clear OpenAI was under no obligation to generate a profit. Right now, there’s a lot we don’t know about its restructuring plan. If the company is still serious about its mission of “ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity” it owes the public more transparency.
What happens next?
Reuters
Elon Musk’s recent $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit’s assets complicates OpenAI’s plan. In this situation, the nonprofit isn’t obligated to sell its assets to Musk under Revlon or anything else — the company simply is not for sale. However, as part of OpenAI’s reorganization plan, the for-profit will need to compensate the nonprofit for its independence. Musk’s bid likely an attempt to inflate the price of this transaction to one higher than what Sam Altman and the rest of OpenAI’s board of directors had in mind. To say Musk and Altman have had a contentious relationship since the former left OpenAI would be an understatement on a grand scale, and having an enemy who not only has the most money of any human on the planet, but also broad and largely unchecked control of the United States’ executive branch data, may frustrate plans.
OpenAI also faces a ticking clock. According to documents seen by The New York Times, the company has, under the terms of its latest investment round, less than two years to free its for-profit from control of the nonprofit. If it fails to do so, the $6.6 billion it raised in new funding will become debt.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/why-openai-is-trying-to-untangle-its-bespoke-corporate-structure-160028589.html?src=rss
Twitch is putting a cap on how much storage a streamer can take up for their uploads and highlight videos. The streaming service has announced that starting on April 19, all uploads and highlights will count towards a new 100-hour storage limit for each streamer, whether the videos are published or not. To note, the cap doesn’t apply to past broadcasts, which are previous livestreams saved to a streamer’s account for on-demand viewing, or clips, which are minute-long segments that can be shared to social networks. Highlights can be longer than clips and can be made of several key moments from a video, which means they could take up more storage space.
The service explained that it originally launched highlights to drive discovery and engagement for streamers, but the feature apparently hasn’t been as effective clips and the mobile discovery feed. Storage is costly, and limiting highlights and uploads will allow the service to support the videos users want to keep on their accounts while also investing in improvements for features like Clips and mobile feed.
Twitch said less than 0.5 percent of active streamers has gone over the 100-hour limit, and those who have will be notified directly. To make it easier for streamers to choose which videos they want to keep, Twitch has rolled out filters for Video Producer that will allow them to sort their content based on length, view count and date created. The service will be deleting videos for users that go beyond the 100-hour cap on April 19 and will be limiting uploads and highlights going forward.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/twitch-streamers-uploads-and-highlights-can-no-longer-exceed-100-hours-143018464.html?src=rss
