Following its release back in 2020, the Moto G Stylus quickly became one of the company’s most popular phones. But now, Motorola is stepping up its ambitions with the new Edge+, which is essentially a more affordable take on a Galaxy Note.
With a starting price of $1,000 (or $900 at launch thanks to a limited-time discount), the Moto Edge+ combines strong performance from Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip with native stylus support. That said, unlike a Galaxy Note or the new Galaxy S22 Ultra, Motorola’s Smart Stylus is an optional extra that will come bundled with a folio cover, the latter of which addresses the phone’s lack of built-in stylus storage. Meanwhile, recharging the stylus is taken care of using the phone’s 5-watt reverse wireless charging.
Elsewhere, the Edge+ comes with a number of premium features including a 6.7-inch 2400 x 1080 OLED with a 144Hz refresh rate, 15-watt Qi wireless charging and dual stereo speakers with support for Dolby Atmos. Base specs include 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a 4,800 mAh battery, though you can bump that up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage if you like. And while Motorola’s software and security support still doesn’t match what you get from Google or Samsung, the company has committed to two years of Android OS upgrades and three years of bi-monthly security updates.
Motorola
The Moto Edge+ also sports a decent selection of cameras headlined by its 50MP main cam and 50MP ultra-wide cam which also pulls double duty for macro photography, with an even higher-res 60MP selfie camera in front. Unfortunately, because the phone’s third rear “camera” is merely a 2MP depth sensor, that means you don’t get a dedicated zoom lens like you do on Samsung’s latest Galaxy S handsets.
In addition to serving as your mobile drawing and notetaking device, Moto envisions the Edge+ as a part-time work device thanks to support for the company’s Ready For platform. When the phone is connected to a nearby TV or monitor (either over USB-C or wirelessly), Ready For provides a more desktop-like UI similar to Samsung’s Dex mode, while the company’s Thinkshield security platform helps protect any potentially sensitive data.
All told, the Edge+ looks like an intriguing mix of specs and features for the price, especially when compared to the $1,200 S22 Ultra. The one thing I’m not quite sure about its is design, most notably that camera module and its surrounding pebble-like glass housing. But for anyone who’s fancied a Galaxy Note but couldn’t stomach Samsung’s super premium price tags, it’s definitely nice to see Motorola offer a more affordable alternative.
The new Moto Edge+ is available today as an unlocked device from Motorola and third-party retailers including Best Buy and Amazon, followed by wider availability from carriers such as Verizon, Boost Mobile and Republic Wireless sometime later this spring.
With Amazon's Staten Island warehouse facing a vote to unionize next month, police have arrested labor organizer Christian Smalls at the facility for allegedly trespassing, Reuters has reported. Two other individuals that reportedly worked at the facility were also arrested, and Smalls was charged with resisting arrest and trespassing.
A former employee, Smalls said that he was "literally a visitor" delivering food to other employees, and that Amazon was trying to "increase the intimidation factor" via his arrest. Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told Reuters that Smalls "has repeatedly trespassed despite multiple warnings."
The three arrests were captured on video by Motherboard, which reported that the NYPD handcuffed the organizers who wore bright red shirts with the slogans "Amazon Labor Union." Smalls was fired in March 2020 after he led a protest outside the warehouse demanding better safety and health protections.
A vote to unionize the Staten Island facility is set to start on March 25th, and a successful one would make it the first union Amazon warehouse. Another vote is set to be counted next month from the same Alabama warehouse that voted against unionizing.
After the first Alabama vote, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) organizing it accused Amazon of violating the National Labor Relations Act. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) agreed and ordered a second vote in early February, with counting to start on March 28th.
Reddit’s app now has another feed to endlessly scroll. The company introduced a new “Discover” section that will surface a personalized stream of photos, GIFs and videos.
The feed, the first time a new section has been added to the Reddit app in more than two years, is meant to help drive Redditors to corners of the site they might not encounter on the front page or in r/popular, according to Jason Costa, the director of product for content and communities a Reddit.
“Discover is more meant to solve the breadth problem and really help people traverse the wide corpus of Reddit,” Costa tells Engadget. He notes that early testing of the feature shows that one out of five users have joined “at least one subreddit as a result of Discover.”
Reddit
Discover also gives Reddit the chance to showcase the vast catalog of memes and GIFs and videos that are shared every day, but aren’t always front and center in the app. While much of Reddit remains a “text-based experience,” the new Discover feed could help draw in people who would rather aimlessly scroll rather than read.
The feed itself is meant to be personalized to each user much the way Instagram’s Explore section would be. New users or people who aren’t logged in will see popular content that may be trending on the service or getting a lot of engagement. While existing users will see recommendations based on subreddits they follow and the types of content they spend the most time viewing.
For now, the Discover fee is limited just to Instagram’s mobile apps, but Costa says that if Redditors like the feature it could influence more aspects of the service. “ I could absolutely see it impacting other surface areas and maybe impacting the design language of Reddit,” he said.
Google delayed its employees' return to office a few times over the past year, but it looks like the tech giant is truly gearing up to welcome workers back this time. According to CNBC, the company is easing some of its COVID-related mandates as part of those efforts, including relaxing its vaccine requirements for employees.
CNBCreported back in December that Google will place employees who don't comply with its vaccine mandate by January 18th on leave unless they secure a valid medical or religious exemption. The report also said that those employees will eventually be fired if they continue refusing to be inoculated against the virus. Google spokesperson Lora Lee Erickson told the news organization that the company dropped the requirement last month, though they refused to discuss the reason behind the decision.
Based on an email from Google Real Estate and Workplace Services VP David Radcliffe that CNBC has obtained, the company is also dropping its testing requirements that also applied to vaccinated employees. It's lifting its mask and social distancing requirements for vaccinated employees, with the exception of its offices in Santa Clara County where its Mountain View headquarters are located, as well. That said, unvaccinated employees must still be approved to work in offices, and they'll still have to wear masks and get regularly tested if they're coming in.
On top of easing up its COVID mandates, Google is also reopening its amenities for employees, including its fitness centers with massages, full shuttle service, more places to eat, as well as lounges and music rooms. Erickson told CNBC:
"We're giving employees who welcome the chance to come into the office the option to do that wherever we safely can, while allowing those who aren't ready to keep working from home. Based on current conditions in the Bay Area, we're pleased that our employees who choose to come in now have the ability to access more onsite spaces and services to work and connect with colleagues."
Google still doesn't have an exact date for its return to office, but Radcliffe's note reportedly said that the company will begin its 30-day transition to its hybrid work week plan if conditions continue to improve. Under the plan, employees will be required to physically come into the company's offices at least thrice a week.
Marvel’s first run of TV shows set in its cinematic universe, including Daredevil and Jessica Jones, have found a new home beyond Netflix – if you live north of the border. The shows, set to disappear from Netflix on March 1st, will appear on Disney Plus in Canada, starting March 16th.
There’s no official news of a similar revival in the US, at least not yet. However – without spoiling any surprises – some characters have managed to make notable reappearances in recent Marvel movies and shows. Hopefully, Disney can figure out exactly where to take these shows, and hey, give The Defenders the do-over it deserves. I won’t be taking any questions on this matter.
Zuckerberg recently recapped the company's natural language processing efforts.
During a Metaverse and AI livestream event on Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that Meta's research division is working on a universal speech translation system that could streamline users' interactions with AI. Zuckerberg said: "Now, we have the chance to improve the internet and set a new standard where we can all communicate with one another, no matter what language we speak or where we come from. And if we get this right, this is just one example of how AI can help bring people together on a global scale."
Apple's latest anti-stalking features for AirTags, announced earlier this month, have started to appear in iOS 15.4 beta 4. The beta update includes a warning when users first set up an AirTag. "Using this item to track people without their consent is a crime in many regions around the world," it reads. "This item is designed to be detected by victims and to enable law enforcement to request identifying information about the owner."
They're up to 70 percent faster for multithreaded performance.
Intel is finally ready to reveal more details of its new U and P-series CPUs for ultraportables. And, much like AMD's upcoming Ryzen 6000 chips, it looks like Intel is aiming to deliver a huge performance boost while consuming less power than last year's hardware. With the Core i7-1280P, Intel's fastest 28-watt P-series CPU, the company claims you'll see up to 70 percent faster multithreaded performance than last year's i7-1195G7. Like the rest of its 12th-gen lineup, Intel's U and P-series chips are a new hybrid design that combines Performance cores (P-cores) and Efficient cores (E-cores) on a single die.
Only 10 percent of its next-gen fleet will be electric.
The USPS is moving forward with plans to spend $11.3 billion on a fleet of next-generation mail trucks that mostly run on gas, despite requests from the EPA and Biden administration to electrify its new vehicles instead. "Our commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition," Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a statement. He went on to say that the agency would try to buy more EVs as additional funding became available.
OnlyFans is facing a pair of lawsuits over claims it conspired with Facebook to disable adult entertainer accounts by placing their content on a terrorism database, the BBC has reported. One was launched earlier this week by a rival platform called FanCentro, and the other is a class action lawsuit made on behalf of three adult entertainers. Both Facebook and OnlyFans were named as defendants in the latter complaint.
The class action suit claims performers' content was placed on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) website despite not being terrorist in nature. That reportedly led to a decline in traffic to websites that compete with OnlyFans. Similar claims were made by FanCentro in its lawsuit. Both say that the problem is happening on Instagram more than any other platform.
OnlyFans told the BBC that the legal claim has "no merit," while Facebook parent Meta said "these allegations are without merit and we will address them in the context of the litigation as needed." A GIFCT spokesperson said: "We are not aware of any evidence to support the theories presented in this lawsuit between two parties with no connection to GIFCT."
OnlyFans is best known for hosting pornography, but it was in the news last summer after saying it would ban "sexually explicit conduct." It said the request was made by "banking partners and payout providers," but it subsequently backtracked after receiving "secured assurances" required to support its adult creators.
However, the move shook the trust of some sex workers and other OnlyFans creators, since a potential ban threatened a key source of their income. Some likely decided to move to rival sites, only to now be allegedly facing a shadow-ban on social media.
Oppo’s latest phone looks and sounds like an expensive, powerful flagship. With a 6.7-inch WQHD+ screen that can hit 1,300 nits of brightness, adaptive refresh rates, and a new AI chip, made in-house to amp up low light camera performance – even at 4K. There are also two 50-megapixel primary camera sensors, a new (but familiar-sounding) Hasselblad collaboration and, well, just look at this beautiful thing.
So far this year, Oppo already announced its MariSilicon X neural processing unit (NPU), its intriguing attempt at foldables, but not a new flagship phone. But that’s where MWC comes in, which so far is shaping up to be a relatively quiet mobile show. It’s good news for Oppo. Barring any leftfield surprises (Samsung and Huawei both have press events this week) it can take center stage. Fortunately, Oppo has provided a device ahead of the public reveal, so I’ve got some early impressions and thoughts to add to proceedings.
The Find X5 Pro borrows heavily from the Find X3 Pro’s shape and style from last year, but I think it looks even better. The camera unit now has a diagonal slope at the bottom, so it should fit in your hand better. There’s no space-age, hyper-reflective silver color option this time, just glossy black or ceramic white. It was a bit much.
Mat Smith/Engadget
This black one picks up fingerprints and smudges with a little too much ease, but I didn’t fear scratching it before I had to film this preview or grab photos for my story. Oppo says the ceramic body is actually nanometer microcrystalline ceramics. The material takes 168 hours to produce but Oppo says results in a phone that can resist scratches over 1200 HV – Vickers Pyramid number that registers hardness. For comparison, stainless steel scores 200 HV, while diamond reaches around 10,000 HV. In summary, you might not need the protective case that also comes in the box. There’s also Gorilla Glass Victus on the screen.
I think it looks great. And while it might not be quite as unique as the Pixel 6’s cyclops look, it at least looks different to the army of phones with their squarish camera arrays. There’s a little originality to the design here. There are also some (reliably?) familiar specs. It’s another phone arriving with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip – arguably the most powerful Android phone chip available in phones at this moment. There’s also a 5,000mAh battery – bigger than the one found in its predecessor. Bigger batteries are always better in my opinion.
Cameras seem to be Oppo’s focus with the Find X5 Pro. The company has made changes across camera hardware, processing, user interfaces and everything in between. Like its last Find X device, the X5 Pro has dual 50-megapixel primary sensors, but each has a few different specs, lens layouts and even materials.
The ultrawide camera, at the top of the Find 5X, includes a freeform lens. Oppo says this should reduce image distortion – that weird stretched effect at the edges of an image – when putting those wide angles to use. It has a f/2.2 aperture and can cover a 110-degree field of view. It’s a 50-megapixel sensor, which uses pixel binning techniques to offer what Oppo says is “2um binned pixel size”.
Just below it, the second 50MP camera taps into the same pixel binning techniques but has an f/1.7 aperture with a glass and resin combination lens. Using glass in just a part of the lens array should improve color accuracy up to 77 percent, according to Oppo. This camera also features five-axis optical image stabilization to boost your chances of a clear shot, and improve imaging performance across low-light settings. All of those axes of stabilization mean this sensor takes up a lot more space inside the Find X5 Pro, but there was still room for a 13-megapixel telephoto camera with f/2.4 aperture and a new 13-channel spectral sensor. Last year’s Oppo flagship had a mere 5-channel sensor, but this upgrade will improve color accuracy and the precision of white balance settings.
Mat Smith/Engadget
On the front, there’s a 32-megapixel selfie cam, with a new RGBW sensor that should offer, again, more accurate color capture and improved dynamic range. The selfie camera will also monitor whether you’re looking at your phone, keeping the screen lit if you’re still watching or reading.
That’s half the hardware story. Oppo is debuting its Marisilicon X NPU chip in its new phone. During my briefing, the company walked through how the chip enables a new “night-mode” video recording, even at 4K resolution with HDR enabled. There’s a barrage of specs and numbers to explain what Oppo’s homemade NPU is adding, but a lot of it distills down to better and faster signal processing and even improved power efficiency, which could be important if you’re capturing a lot of 4K content.
I briefly tested out 4K Ultra Night Video, Oppo’s take on low-light video recording. While it does certainly help to amplify detail in the dimmest situations, at least when I’ve used it so far, the NPU hasn’t translated to 4K video notably better than its competition.
I tried filming last night with the Find X5 Pro and Pixel 6 Pro, and Google’s footage seemed more natural and less harsh than what Oppo’s processing produced. Foliage detail was a little too excessively blown-out to the point of turning gray – it appeared to tune out the green.
But for the sake of consistency, let’s go over what Hasselblad is adding, aside from cachet.
The phone’s Pro mode offers users some Hasselblad-seasoned fine-grain controls. That means a big orange shutter button and three Hasselblad approved filters for stills and videos. I can’t explain why, but I really liked what each of these ‘special’ filters did to my video and photos. You even get Xpan Mode, where you can shoot video in 65:24 ratio. If you don’t care to do the math, it’s just a very wide, cinematic aspect ratio. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I loved this too.
Mat Smith/Engadget
Now OnePlus and Oppo are more tightly aligned, it’s not surprising to see software overlap like this. Yes, you also get Hasselblad’s natural color solution, where the company has tried to replicate the color accuracy of its very expensive cameras into these smartphone camera sensors.
Oppo is saving a little bit of spectacle for its MWC show, and said spectacle, unfortunately, includes pricing and availability. I’ll update this story once Oppo spills those all-important details. However, you’re unlikely to see the Find X5 Pro in the US – something you may hear several times during Europe’s big mobile show.
Twitter has admitted that it mistakenly removed accounts sharing Russian military activity in the midst of the Ukraine invasion. As TechCrunch notes, the deleted accounts, which have since been reinstated, included an aggregator of user-generated posts from Ukraine and accounts owned by people doing open source intelligence investigation (OSINT) to debunk fake news and claims.
While users first blamed mass reporting for the account deletions, Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth said it wasn't a factor at all. Instead, the removals were a result of errors made by human moderators who are proactively addressing manipulated media on the website.
In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson explained to TechCrunch:
"We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and, in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error. We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts."
In addition to proactively monitoring manipulated media coming from the region, Twitter has also responded to the Ukraine crisis with tips on how to secure accounts. Ukraine's websites have been hit by cyberattacks over the past few weeks, and social media accounts, especially those sharing news and images from the country, might also be targeted.
Twitter Safety has posted a series of tweets in Ukrainian with tips on how to protect accounts with strong passwords and two-factor authentication. It also included links to its support page for those whose accounts had been compromised and for those who got locked out. Twitter has linked users to instructions on how to disable location info and how to remove it from previous tweets, as well. Finally, it's advising users to deactivate their account if they feel that the safest option is to delete it completely.
Користуючись Твіттером у зонах конфлікту або інших зонах підвищеного ризику, необхідно знати про способи керування профілем і цифровою інформацією.
Кожна ситуація є індивідуальною, тому слід враховувати деякі моменти:
Facebook may be failing to tag a large amount of climate misinformation posted on its site, a study released today indicates. Researchers from the Center for Counter Digital Hate analyzed 184 exceptionally popular stories from what it identified to be the top ten publishers of climate change denial content in the world (a list that includes Russian state media, The Daily Wire, Breitbart and others). It found that roughly half (50.5 percent) of the stories failed to trigger Facebook’s information labels designed to flag coverage on climate change. Stories from such heavily trafficked news outlets should be the easiest targets for fact-checkers, suggesting that much more climate misinformation is evading Facebook’s screening.
Last year Facebook (which has since rebranded as Meta) promised to flag climate change coverage in a number of countries, including Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria, South Africa, the UK and the US. Such posts would be marked with an informational label that would direct users to the platform’s “Climate Science Information Center”, which contains information that debunks myths on the climate. The study’s authors began their research following Facebook’s May 2021 announcement that it would tackle climate change denial propaganda, and all articles included in the analysis were posted after that date.
Independent fact-checkers also flag climate change stories that are false, and Facebook adds a warning label and reduces distribution. "When they rate this content as false, we add a warning label and reduce its distribution so fewer people see it. During the time frame of this report, we hadn't completely rolled out our labeling program, which very likely impacted the results,” Facebook spokesperson Kevin McAllister told NPR.
Facebook has made multiple efforts to scrub misinformation posted on its platform over the past few years, for topics like the 2020 presidential election, the Covid-19 pandemic and vaccines. But as Engadget and other outlets have covered, a large amount of misinformation is still able to clear Facebook’s algorithms without proper labeling.
But nearly a year later, Facebook’s review system on climate change content is still missing the mark. I was able to post a number of different climate change stories on Facebook without hitting its algorithms, including articles entitled “Why the West Coast Heat Wave Has Nothing To Do With Climate Change” from The Federalist and “Alarmists: Global Warming Causes ‘Unprecedented Cold’ in Tajikistan”, published in Breitbart.
Facebook hasn’t been specific on what type of outlets or information is eligible for an info label. Engadget has reached out for comment, and will update when we hear back.
While there’s some evidence that suggests efforts by social media platforms to tag misinformation and hoaxes has worked to stop their spread, a large amount of misinformation still slips through the cracks. And unfortunately, additional research indicates that the absence of these warnings (the lack of a climate information label, for instance) increases the "perceived accuracy" of content.
Before he was apprehended by Amsterdam police, the suspect involved in Tuesday’s Apple Store hostage situation demanded a €200 million (approximately $226 million) ransom paid in cryptocurrencies, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Police say they have yet to establish a motive for the 27-year-old gunman, whose identity they didn’t share. What we know is that he was a resident of the city and had a criminal record before the event. He was also carrying explosives on his person at the time of his arrest.
The gunman was apprehended after his hostage fled the building when a police robot delivered water to the front of the store. Police used a squad car to knock him down, causing him serious injuries. On Wednesday, he died of the injuries he sustained in his arrest. "The hostage played a heroic role by forcing a breakthrough," according to Amsterdam police chief Frank Pauw. "He acted in a split-second. Had he not done that, we could have been in for a long, nasty night."
According to Engadget’s research, Wednesday’s incident wasn’t the first time someone demanded a ransom paid in cryptocurrency to end a hostage situation. In 2017, kidnappers in Ukraine released an employee from a cryptocurrency exchange after their demand for a ransom paid in Bitcoin (valued at $1 million at the time) was met.
