You’ll likely have to keep using Peacock if you want to stream Premier League games. As Bloombergnotes, NBCUniversal has signed a six-year deal keeping it as the Premier League’s official US broadcast partner. The arrangement gives NBC Sports access to all 380 matches each season until 2028. The pact also gives NBC sole rights for Spanish language coverage.
The two didn’t say how this would affect Peacock’s coverage. However, the Premier League highlighted Peacock as a platform that could reach “every home” with internet access. NBC Sports became the Premier League’s American partner in 2013 and will have its existing agreement until May 2022.
There’s a real chance Peacock will continue streaming many (though not all) of those games. Bloomberg pointed out that Premier League matches have been one of the few reliable sources of viewers for the fledgling service — the renewed deal could keep them watching and out of the hands of rivals like ESPN, which made a bid for Premier League rights. This could also drive free Peacock users to the Premium tiers currently needed to watch the league’s games online.
The extension won’t thrill you if you were looking for more ways to stream the exploits of Chelsea, Liverpool and other top-flight teams. However, it at least provides some consistency if you were already a Peacock user or happy to watch on Comcast’s various other platforms.
Enlarge/ The Kia EV9 concept uses pixelated headlights that Hyundai and Kia designers have grown fond of in recent years. (credit: Kia)
Amidst the slew of new electric vehicles that have been introduced in the last few years, one thing has been largely missing: a third row. SUVs and crossovers with room for more than five passengers are wildly popular, but if you don’t want to burn fossil fuels, your options have been limited.
Hyundai and Kia have plans to change that, though. In advance of the Los Angeles Auto Show, which starts tomorrow, the two companies each unveiled concepts that hint at all-new, three-row electric SUVs bound for the US in 2024. Hyundai teased the Ioniq Seven, the second model in a new electric-only sub-brand it’s launching. Meanwhile, Kia gave us a peek at the EV9, a boxy big brother to the curvy EV6.
In keeping with recent Hyundai and Kia designs, the two vehicles look quite different, despite being based on the same E-GMP platform. Yet they share enough details to feel part of the same family.
Enlarge/ The Apple Watch Series 7 is virtually indistinguishable from the Series 6 (less so with a light-colored watch face), and it doesn’t add much, but it’s still the best smartwatch you can buy. (credit: Corey Gaskin)
Apple has pushed out two small software updates for its platforms—one for iPhones, and the other for the Apple Watch.
According to its release notes, iOS 15.1.1 does exactly one thing: it addresses dropped calls on iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max.
Here are Apple’s own words, which aren’t any more revealing:
Early access Battlefield 2042 players are seemingly having an amazing time with the game ahead of its official launch on November 19, though not always in ways the developers may have intended. One source of tremendous absurdity and enjoyment is the game’s hovercraft, in which players are doing delightfully impossible…
The fourth episode of Gizmodo’s podcast Gadgettes just dropped, and this week, we’re getting ready for the holidays. Your hosts, Gizmodo reporter Florence Ion and senior editor Caitlin McGarry, womansplain the latest gadgets we’re testing and reviewing. Usually, we interview our fellow Gizmodo reporters about the…
“In the past, Apple has taken an opposing stance on letting consumers repair their devices. Some of that is changing with Apple’s new announcement,” writes Slashdot reader wakeboarder. “Apple will sell components like batteries and screens to allow consumers to repair their own devices. This will help reduce e-waste, but will also allow Apple to control the market for parts — not exactly what right-to-repair activists have fought for.”
With that said, Apple “didn’t change its policy out of the goodness of its heart,” writes The Verge’s Maddie Stone. The timing of this announcement was “deliberate,” considering Wednesday was a key deadline in the fight over a shareholder resolution environmental advocates filed with the company in September asking Apple to re-evaluate its stance on independent repair. The issue would’ve likely ended up at the Securities and Exchange Commission. From the report:
Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy told The Verge that the program “has been in development for well over a year,” describing it as “the next step in increasing customer access to Apple genuine parts, tools, and manuals.” Leahy declined to say whether the timing of the announcement was influenced by shareholder pressure. Activist shareholders believe that it was. “The timing is definitely no coincidence,” says Annalisa Tarizzo, an advocate with Green Century, the mutual fund company that filed the right-to-repair resolution with Apple in September. As a result of today’s announcement, Green Century is withdrawing its resolution, which asked Apple to “reverse its anti repair practices” and evaluate the benefits of making parts and tools more available to consumers.
Apple’s initial response to the Green Century resolution was less than conciliatory. Tarizzo says that on October 18 (30 days before the self service announcement), Apple submitted a “no action request” to the Securities and Exchange Commission asking the investor oversight body to block the proposal. According to Tarizzo, Apple’s argument before the SEC was that the proposal — that the company “prepare a report” on the environmental and social benefits of making its devices easier to fix — ran afoul of shareholder proposal guidance by infringing on Apple’s normal business operations. However, earlier this month, the SEC issued new guidance concerning no-action requests that includes a carve-out for proposals that raise “significant social policy issues.” In other words, shareholders can bring resolutions that affect a company’s day-to-day business operations if those proposals raise issues with significant societal impact. Tarizzo believes that this change made it much more likely the SEC would side with Green Century rather than Apple, particularly since the mutual fund company connected the dots between increased access to repair and the fight against climate change. (Using devices as long as possible through maintenance and repair is one of the best ways to reduce the climate impact of consumer technology since the majority of the emissions associated with our gadgets occur during the manufacturing stage.)
“It wasn’t a guarantee that the SEC would side with us, but the new guidance indicates it’s very likely we would prevail,” Tarizzo says. “It effectively took away a lot of Apple’s leverage in the process.” Now, Apple seems to have regained some leverage by announcing its new Self Service Repair program on the same day that Green Century was required to respond to the no-action request. Instead of arguing that the SEC should allow the shareholder resolution to move forward, Green Century is now withdrawing the resolution entirely.
Today, MediaTek is re-entering the flagship SoC space with a bang. The Dimensity 9000 is the first Armv9 SoC, with X2, A710 and A510 cores, large new GPU, massive new ISP, first LPDDR5X, and all in a new TSMC N4 process node.
Enlarge/ Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Steve Dickson testifies before a Senate panel examining safety certification of jetliners on June 17, 2020, in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Graeme Jennings )
Two weeks ago, AT&T and Verizon reluctantly agreed to delay the launch of 5G on newly acquired C-band spectrum licenses for one month, until January 5, in response to the Federal Aviation Administration’s claim that the new service could interfere with radio altimeters used in airplanes.
Mobile carriers aren’t alone in being frustrated by the delay. Telecom-industry observers point out that the Federal Communications Commission approved use of the C-Band spectrum from 3.7 to 3.98 GHz only after analyzing the aviation industry’s interference claims and finding no evidence to support the claims. The FCC also required a 220 MHz guard band that will remain unused to protect altimeters from interference. That guard band is more than twice as big as the 100 MHz buffer initially suggested by Boeing, the FCC has said.
Moreover, this spectrum is reportedly already being used for 5G in nearly 40 countries without evidence of the problems that US aviation officials are warning of. “Tick, tick, tick… US wireless leadership and national security await ‘resolution’ of unfounded concerns by FAA,” former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly tweeted yesterday.
Our nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, is 4.37 light-years from Earth, which is super close from a cosmological perspective but achingly far from a human point of view. A new telescope promises to bring this intriguing star system, and any habitable planets it holds, into closer view.
Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, sent an email to staff calling the latest wave of allegations about Activision Blizzard deeply troubling, as first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed to Kotaku by Microsoft PR. Spencer joins a growing list of developers, shareholders, and game industry executives speaking up about reported…
Europa could harbor complex life, and we’ll have to take care to avoid any cross-contamination. (credit: Ted Stryk/NASA)
The Beresheet crash landed on Earth’s Moon in 2019. Part of the ill-fated Israeli lunar lander’s payload was a bunch of tardigrades, or “water bears.” These organisms are under a millimeter long and can survive extreme cold and radiation by expelling nearly all their moisture before entering a nearly death-like state. The Beresheet tardigrades may have survived the crash and could, potentially, be resurrected by being reintroduced to water.
The tardigrades—sometimes called moss piglets—are safely asleep and probably not running amok on the surface of the Moon. But, in general, scientists, governments, and space agencies around the world agree that bringing Earth’s life to extraterrestrial locales, or vice versa, isn’t great.
A new paper builds on the growing body of literature about this cosmic no-no and draws on the burgeoning field of invasion science—the research of how, on Earth, non-native species spread to and alter new locations. The zebra mussel’s spread across North America through its ability to outcompete native species is a classic example.
The US Department of Justice has charged two Iranian hackers for their involvement in a disinformation campaign that targeted American voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election. In October of last year, Seyyed Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian allegedly sent threatening emails to Democratic voters in Florida in which they threatened to physically hurt them if they did not vote for former President Donald Trump. When the incident first happened, the US Director of National Intelligence held a press conference to warn voters of the emails.
Additionally, Kazemi and Kashian allegedly attempted to break into 11 state voter registration and information websites. In one instance, the DOJ alleges they successfully downloaded the information of more than 100,000 state voters. They may have also carried out a disinformation campaign on Facebook that saw them contact, among other individuals, Republican senators and members of Congress. They claimed they were volunteers with Proud Boys and said they had evidence the Democratic Party planned to exploit security vulnerabilities in election systems to edit mail-in ballots.
Kazemi and Kashian’s efforts to sway the election culminated on November 4th when they allegedly attempted to hack the network of a US media company. They were unsuccessful because the FBI had warned the firm in time.
“This indictment details how two Iran-based actors waged a targeted, coordinated campaign to erode confidence in the integrity of the U.S. electoral system and to sow discord among Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division in a statement. “The allegations illustrate how foreign disinformation campaigns operate and seek to influence the American public.”
US officials told The Washington Post they believe the two hackers are currently in Iran, suggesting they may not face authorities anytime soon. The DOJ also didn’t directly link their actions to the Iranian government.
I do two workouts most days: a session on a spin bike in the morning, and weightlifting in the afternoon or evening. But I remember a time when two-a-days sounded like an incredible amount of work, the domain of pro athletes and people who had an unhealthy obsession with exercise. It turns out that doubling up on…
The US government has seized $56 million worth of cryptocurrency from an admitted participant in the BitConnect scam and intends to sell the coins and use the proceeds to reimburse victims. The Department of Justice says that it’s the largest recovery of cryptocurrency to date — and that it was willingly given up by Los Angeles resident Glenn Arcaro, who has called himself BitConnect’s “number one promoter.” From a report: According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BitConnect convinced people to invest a total of $2 billion by telling them that it had a bot capable of generating incredibly high rates of return from crypto trading. In other words, BitConnect sold itself as a way for people to easily invest in cryptocurrency and to make a lot of money doing so, at a time when people were hearing a lot about crypto but didn’t know much about it (around 2016 through 2018). In reality, the DOJ says it was all a scam — BitConnect used money from new investors to pay old ones (otherwise known as a Ponzi scheme), and its advocates built pyramid schemes where they would get a cut for convincing others to invest by promising them the same deal. In September, Arcaro pleaded guilty to participating in both parts of the scam while allegedly posting videos online to make fun of BitConnect doubters. He said that he had earned what was then valued at $24 million by his participation.
Star Wars’ Expanded Universe has lived on in myriad ways since it came to an official end in 2014, when Lucasfilm and Disney wiped the slate of continuity clean. While some elements and characters have rejoined canon, and re-releases of classic EU comics and books give chances to re-explore what was, one enduring EU…
At this juncture it’s almost comical that Halo was once upon a time treated as second fiddle on PC. These days, it’s an undeniable juggernaut. Case in point: Earlier this week, Microsoft surprise-released a beta for Halo Infinite’s multiplayer mode on Xbox and PC. It instantly rocketed up the Steam charts, topping …
Meta’s efforts to encourage healthy teen usage habits aren’t enough for some state officials. The New York Timesreports a coalition of state attorneys general has launched an investigation into Instagram’s effects on teens. California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee and Vermont are concerned Meta might be offering and promoting Instagram to the younger crowd while knowing the potentials for mental and physical harm. If so, the social media giant might violate states’ consumer protection laws.
The investigators are most worried about Meta’s techniques to boost the “frequency and duration” of interactions at the expense of teens. Leaked internal research showed that Instagram hurt a significant percentage of teens, particularly girls, resulting in issues ranging from depression to self-harm.
A Meta spokesperson told Engadget the accusations were “false” and showed a “deep misunderstanding” of the situation. You can read the full statement below. It previously shared research data and claimed the leak misrepresented its work,providing “context” suggesting that certain information couldn’t be used to reach conclusions about average behavior or links to mental and physical harm.
Meta has taken some steps to address worries, including encouragements to take breaks and “pausing” work on Instagram Kids. There’s also no certainty the probe will lead to more substantive action. Nonetheless, the company is under much more pressure to safeguard teens — it could face legal repercussions if the states don’t feel it has done enough.
These accusations are false and demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of the facts. While challenges in protecting young people online impact the entire industry, we’ve led the industry in combating bullying and supporting people struggling with suicidal thoughts, self-injury, and eating disorders. We continue to build new features to help people who might be dealing with negative social comparisons or body image issues, including our new ‘Take a Break’ feature and ways to nudge them towards other types of content if they’re stuck on one topic. We continue to develop parental supervision controls and are exploring ways to provide even more age-appropriate experiences for teens by default.
Last week, Twitter’s “premium” subscription service made its debut in the United States. Twitter Blue is a $3 monthly subscription that buys subscribers access to additional features, like an undo button and ad-free news articles.
For now, Twitter Blue comes with a fairly limited set of extra features designed for the people who spend the most time on the service. According to Twitter’s Sara Beukpour, this group includes “verified longtime Twitter users” as well as “news lovers” and other “super tweeters.” In other words: the 25 percent of Twitter’s user base who send 97 percent of all tweets.
“I actually bet many of them are you,” Beykpour said during a briefing with a group of tech reporters last week. Of course I signed up immediately.
And after a little more than a week with Twitter Blue, I’m not sure it’s worth $3 a month for most people. The features are mostly useful, but it’s frustrating that not everything works the same way across Twitter’s app and website. But there are undoubtedly useful features, and I am intrigued by what might come next for “premium Twitter.” For now, though, here’s a look at what $3 buys you.
‘Undo’ tweets
Of all the features in Twitter Blue, the “undo” button has gotten the most hype. Twitter will likely never give us an actual edit button, so this is probably the closest we’ll ever get. And if you’re prone to typos or tweeting-and-then-instantly-regretting, this feature alone might be worth the subscription. I say might because the “undo” can also be incredibly confusing, and doesn’t always work as you expect.
It’s supposed to work pretty much like Gmail’s “undo send” feature. After you hit “send,” you’ll have a few seconds when you can see the tweet you just wrote, but it hasn’t actually been published. If you change your mind for whatever reason, you can hit “undo,” which takes you back to the tweet in the compose screen. Twitter gives you the ability to set how long this window is — it can range from 5 seconds to a full 60 seconds — and you can always opt to send it before the window runs out with an extra click.
Screenshot / Twitter
But undoing a tweet doesn’t always work the same way across Twitter’s app and website. On Twitter’s app, you can use the “undo” feature for almost any type of tweet: original tweets (tweets sent from the main compose window), replies, threads, quote tweets and polls. Essentially, you can “undo” almost anything you tweet, anywhere in the app. But that’s not the case on twitter.com, where the undo function only works with original tweets and replies, but not with quote tweets or threads. Unless you exclusively tweet from your phone, this means you have to remember which tweets are editable undoable and which aren’t. A typo-ridden tweet can be undone, but an ill-advised quote tweet cannot.
There’s also the fact that it can take several steps to actually undo a tweet. In Twitter’s app, the default setting is that the first thing you see after you mash the tweet button is your tweet and an “undo” button. This gives you plenty of time to give it another read, even if you have a relatively short undo “window.” But on Twitter’s website, you can only undo by looking for a “view tweet” dialog at the bottom of the page and then navigating to the page with your tweet and the undo button.
Sometimes, “view tweet” doesn’t appear at all, and the only way to access the “undo” is to navigate to your profile and look for the pending tweet on your timeline. Not only is this a confusing extra step, but it also makes it harder to take advantage of the undo button at all. Is it still useful to have? I guess, but the unpredictability of it kind of gave me more anxiety than just not having it at all.
Reader mode and bookmark folders
The reader mode is probably the most underrated feature of Twitter Blue, and the one I’d argue would be most useful for all the site’s users, not just those willing to pay. It converts long threads into a much more readable stream of text, much like a browser’s reader view would. I hate those intrusive (and ethically dubious) third-party thread apps that “unroll” tweets into separate websites, but there’s a reason why those services are so popular: lengthy threads are difficult to read. Twitter’s service was never designed for essay-length tweet storms, and long threads are often cut off. Reader mode is a simple solution that is so effective I can’t believe it took them this long to make.
Screenshot / Twitter
It’s even better when paired with another new feature: bookmark folders. Now, when I come across an impossibly long tweetstorm I want to come back to later, I simply add it to my “to read” folder and keep scrolling. Except, again, bookmark folders are for now only supported in Twitter’s app. Head over to twitter.com and all your bookmarks are still a mess.
Ad-free news and ‘top articles’
My favorite Twitter Blue feature — and a large part of the reason why I will likely continue handing over $3 each month for it — is the “top articles” feature. The feature shows you a list of all the most-shared news articles by people in your Twitter network over the last 24 hours. If that sounds at all familiar, it’s because the feature is Twitter’s nod to Nuzzel, a once independent news app that also created feeds of articles based on what was being shared by people you follow on Twitter. But the original app was shut down when Twitter acquired Scroll, the news startup that had previously bought Nuzzel.
And while “Top Articles” doesn’t have all the functionality Nuzzel once did, it’s enough to scratch the itch for former fans of the app (a group that seems to be almost entirely made up of journalists as far as I can tell). But even if you never used Nuzzel, Top Articles is useful. It gives you a quick digest of what the people you follow are reading and tweeting about. Or, you know, you can just use it to figure out who is the main character of the day.
Screenshot / Twitter
Twitter’s acquisition of Scroll also powers another significant part of Twitter Blue: ad-free news articles. Scroll (and now Twitter) formed partnerships with hundreds of news outlets in order to offer ad-free browsing in exchange for a portion of users’ subscription fees. Now, Twitter lets subscribers view how much their own browsing has directed to those publishers. It’s an intriguing concept, and one that won Scroll a lot of praise before it was bought by Twitter.
It’s also the aspect of Twitter Blue I’m most curious to watch. As it stands now, it can feel a little disjointed. While stripping out ads is nice, it doesn’t include access to paywalled content, so it can be jarring to see an “ad-free with Twitter Blue” banner only to hit a paywall. However, Twitter has hinted that it may one day pursue more ways to access paywalled content — and a message in the app says paywall access isn’t included “right now” — so there’s good reason to hope that may one day change.
Early access to new features and customization
Twitter has gotten much more public with the features it experiments with in recent years. The company at one point had a separate beta version of the app it used to try out new tweaks. That app is no longer available, but the “labs” feature of Twitter Blue feels in some ways like its successor. The company plans to make some experimental features available to Twitter Blue subscribers first, before deciding whether they should become full-fledged features available to more people.
For now, there are only two features that fall into this bucket: the ability to pin specific chats to the top of your DM inbox, and the ability to upload videos of up to 10 minutes (these longer videos are not entirely new, but accounts had to be approved by Twitter in order to have access to the feature). I appreciate having the option to do both, though I haven’t used either feature and I suspect most others won’t either.
Screenshot / Twitter
Finally, Twitter Blue also gives you the ability to make small tweaks to the look and feel of the Twitter app. For example, you can change the app icon or set a new color theme (the “theme” only changes small elements like the color of the tweet composer and the dot that appears when you have a new notification). You can also opt to rearrange the shortcuts in the bottom of the app’s navigation bar, which is kind of cool (especially if you want to, say, banish the Spaces Tab). But, again, these are small details that I can’t imagine most people bothering to change.
Is it worth it?
Whether or not you think all that is worth three bucks a month largely depends on how much you use Twitter (and how willing you are to pay for apps). While I don’t think it makes sense for most people, I think it’s pretty compelling for anyone who depends on Twitter for their job or otherwise falls into that extra-dedicated “super tweeter” category.
And while Twitter hasn’t offered any details around how many subscribers have signed up, the app has made about $180,000 since it first started offering Twitter Blue this summer, according to data provided by analytics firm Sensor Tower. That’s not much money for Twitter, but it does suggest there is a not-totally-insignificant number of people willing to try it out (and the service is still only available in four countries).
At a broader level, Twitter Blue raises important questions about how the company will prioritize new features. While the company has maintained that there will always be a free version of Twitter, it’s not difficult to imagine that the most exciting and useful updates could end up being locked behind a subscription. Twitter spent much of the last decade not really creating any meaningful new features at all, so it still stings a little to see the company add the kinds of features longtime users have long hoped for, only to restrict them to those willing to pay.
