In disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission, web registrar and hosting company GoDaddy has revealed that it discovered it had been hacked. The company says that it discovered an “unauthorized third party” had gained access to its Managed WordPress hosting environment. Anything up to 1.2 million users have seen their email address and customer number exposed, as well as admin passwords for both WordPress sites hosted on the platform, plus passwords for sFTPs, databases and SSL private keys.
The document says that GoDaddy believes that the breach first occurred on September 6th, 2021, and the investigation is currently ongoing. Demetrius Comes, Chief Information Security Officer, says that GoDaddy is currently working with law enforcement and a private IT forensics firm. In addition, it says that it has reset the relevant credentials and will work with users to issue new SSL certificates. Comes ends his statement by saying that the company will, perhaps a little too belatedly, “learn from this incident” and will take steps to prevent such a breach happening in future.
This is far from the first time that GoDaddy has been spoken in the same sentence as a security breach in recent years. In 2018, an AWS error exposed data on GoDaddy servers, and in 2020, 28,000 user accounts were breached by an unauthorized individual. Later last year, GoDaddy was also referenced as part of a hack that took down a number of sites in the cryptocurrency space.
Saints Row, the reboot of the open-world shooter with an emphasis on gonzo fun and campy excess, has been delayed. Volition’s chief creative officer, Jim Boone, has announced that the title will now land on August 23rd, 2022, back from the original launch date of February 25th.
In a statement, Boone reiterated that the title wasn’t undergoing any wholesale changes and that the team had adapted well to the adversities imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But that the original deadline did not offer the team enough time to “do our vision justice,” especially given the “size and scope” of the new game.
Boone added that the extra time will be spent ensuring that the game gets further “fine tuning,” with an emphasis on improving the title’s “overall quality and polish.” He closed the statement by saying that the finished product will have “been worth the wait,” especially given how much is riding on the launch.
Saints Row (2022) is a clean-sheet reboot of the series, which had lain dormant since 2015’s Gat out of Hell (we’re still not counting Agents of Mayhem). Earlier this year, Volition’s developers said that while there was a degree of affection for the series, narratively it had run its course — especially since the last title was a rock musical-themed journey into hell.
Consequently the new title is set in the Four Corners region of the US, with the player character flanked by a trio of new associates. And whereas the previous series spun out into parodying whatever genre was en vogue at the time, this new title is focused more explicitly on the material concerns of its crew. Except, you know, it’s a Saints Row game, so put your tongue in your cheek while you're doing all of this.
Since the 1970s, the story of the television is one of conquest as it swallowed more and more space in our living rooms. Owning a set wasn’t good enough, we needed a VCR, BetaMax or LaserDisc player to lurk on a nearby shelf. A decade later, a console or home computer would take its place in the orbit of the TV, followed not long after by the cable box. And, in the DVD age, people would take advantage of the affordability of rudimentary 5.1 surround sound to add in an AV Receiver, or Amp, to that ever-growing TV cabinet. And, as TVs got flatter and wider, their integral speakers stopped being up to the job so much that a dedicated sound bar was essential. Throw in a streaming stick or puck, and our TVs have become ecosystems of their own, no longer lurking but dominating our living rooms.
Sky Glass, then, is a reaction against this sprawl, an all-in-one TV, set-top-box and soundbar that promises to eliminate the clutter. Hell, Sky Glass even has its own games pre-installed, although you’ll still need to bring your console along for the serious stuff. It’s also the first true-blue Sky device that doesn’t need a satellite dish for connection, instead delivering all of its content through the internet. That’s a long time coming, too, since Sky has been teasing and promising the launch of a Sky-branded internet-only TV platform for years now (distinct from Now, at least).
In many ways, Sky Glass is the logical end point for the smart TV industry, a set that bakes in everything you need, and keeps you there. It’s also the final step on a long road for content producers as they regain control over what you can watch, and when.
Hardware
Sky
Sky loaned me the 55-inch Glass model in black for two weeks with access to a press account which included Sky Ultimate. It ships in a cardboard box, free from single use plastic as part of the company’s commitment to building a greener device. It ships with a stand that can pull double-duty as a wall mount should you require, which is fiddlier to build than I would have liked. The instructions, printed on the box, are ambiguous enough that I made at least one mistake that led to me disassembling the whole thing and starting again. For the sake of your backs, get help to lift the thing, because it was a feat worthy of a medal just to hoik this thing up and onto my TV table alone.
Most flat-screen TVs try to minimise their bulk, tapering out beyond the area where the power, mainboard and connectivity is sited. That’s not the situation with Sky Glass which is designed as a solid cuboid, lest the cut-out for mounting the stand. This thing looks and feels like an iMac G5 if Jonathan Ive suddenly discovered a penchant for making everything feel solid and immovable. In part, this is because this unit is bigger than the 43-inch TV I own, but it’s more down to the solidity in its design and the built-in soundbar which means that, by default, the hardware suffocates the space that it’s in. Not to brag, but my living room is much bigger than the UK’s average and I’ve caught myself thinking “woof, that is a big TV” several times already.
Getting the thing to work, meanwhile, takes about as long as typing your WiFi password. Once a very quick update is applied, you can be kicking back and watching the box in five minutes.
The system inside Glass is driven by a quad-core AmLogic ARM A55 system-on-chip which only occasionally slows down or stutters. Some of this, I’m sure, is down to being tied to your internet connection for all of your viewing than it is the hardware’s limitations. When watching live football in UHD, I got the odd stutter and black screen, which is something Sky says is a teething issue with the new platform. But don’t be surprised if, when watching on-demand content, rewinding and fast-forwarding video brings a little stutter or two of its very own.
Despite the fact that Sky Glass is designed not to have too many additional components hitched to it, it does pack a trio of HDMI 2.1 ports with support for CEC. One of the ports supports eARC for audio passthrough, but given the system has a soundbar built in it’s unlikely most will need this. In addition, the unit supports Bluetooth 5.0, has a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port and WiFi 6. A USB-C port lurking round back is for charging only, but will deliver up to 15W should you need to connect a smart device to juice.
Sky
It’s worth noting that Sky offers a “Whole Home” package to accompany Sky Glass, letting you watch TV in other rooms. For that, you will need to pick up a Sky Stream Puck, which costs £50 per unit (plus an additional £10 per-month to enable the feature). Sky didn’t send me a Stream Puck so I can’t say how well it works.
Sky Glass requires a minimum home broadband speed of 15Mbps, a generous (or nonexistent) data cap and a further 5Mbps per Sky Stream Puck you install, up to a maximum of six. Sadly, despite running a maxed out internet service, my viewing was interrupted on one more than one occasion. I had several stutters when watching one football game, and all attempts to watch the Manchester Derby live in 4K were met with a black screen and a message to “Please wait for your programme to load.” When it does work, live sports run about half a minute behind the feed on a standard satellite connection.
Sound and Vision
Every Sky Glass model houses a TP-Vision made, 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) Quantum Dot display with a 60Hz refresh rate. It is available in 43- 55-, and 65-inch sizes, and supports HDR 10, Dolby Vision, Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) and 10-bit color. The first set Sky sent me had some backlight issues, but since its replacement arrived, I’ve had no complaints about the picture quality here, especially when watching gorgeous movies in broad daylight or dark environments. It seems, to me, that you’re getting the best experience you can from a screen like this without making the leap up to an OLED display, which wouldn’t be affordable at this sort of price anyway. The 60Hz panel may give some pause to gamers, as the latest consoles from Sony and Microsoft support 120Hz. There’s also no dedicated ‘game mode’ to reduce latency as you’d find on most regular TVs.
Sky Glass comes with a sextet of speakers buried inside its chassis offering support for 2.1 Stereo, as well as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital. There are three forward-firing speakers, two upward-firers as well as a single subwoofer. The company says that the total output of all six is around 215 Watts and promises support for enhanced speech modes. Honestly, in those rare moments when you feel you can indulge your passion for cinema and turn the volume up high, the sound coming out of this thing is plenty good enough for a living room. Sadly, much of the glitz with systems like this is only audible at the sort of volumes that’ll get you knifed by your nearest neighbor. But, overall, the integral soundbar is more than enough to make me wish all TVs had half-decent audio again.
User Interface
When Sky launched Q in 2016, it was with the explicit aim of putting a crowbar between you and live television. No longer would you aimlessly scroll through the company’s near-infinite EPG looking for something to watch. After it had time enough to understand the sort of thing you liked, it would be able to serve that up on the home screen whenever you turned your TV on. Now, while Sky Q can already interface and search through third-party apps like Netflix, there was still a church-and-state-like divide between Sky’s content and those from third-parties. With Sky Glass, that line has been dissolved, and the new software can index content from almost all of its partners.
Essentially, this is Sky’s way of masking the balkanization that takes place very frequently with the same show on multiple broadcasters and streaming platforms. Because I have small kids, the best examples I can think of are from children’s TV, but this applies to plenty of others as well. For instance, Sky’s own on-demand platform has a selection of episodes of Blue’s Clues and You available from the show’s three seasons. But since the first season is also available complete on Netflix, Sky Glass fills in the gaps with the Netflix-hosted episodes where it can. Similarly, Bluey is broadcast by the BBC in the UK but only offers a handful of episodes from the show’s first season on demand. Disney+ (which I do not yet subscribe to) has both seasons in their entirety, and I can see what I can and can’t access within a single menu.
At launch, Sky will index content from BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. Shortly after the hardware was announced, Sky’s parent company Comcast announced that it had signed a deal to bring Apple’s TV app to its platforms in the US and UK. As well as those content providers, Sky Glass can access YouTube, play music from Spotify, stream live exercise classes from Peloton and mobile games from the Play.Works stable. Unlike a smart TV or external streaming puck, however, you cannot add in additional apps unless Sky chooses to enable them. (Although, to be fair, it’s not as if companies like Amazon and Roku can guarantee that either, given their prior skirmishes with YouTube.)
The UI itself is very much an evolution of the template Sky laid down in 2016, with the linear, live TV menu not the first thing you have access to. Instead, you open with the curated “Top Picks For You” section which pulls from all of the services that you have access to. Because this is a loaned TV with a press account, these recommendations were all fairly generic and tied to Sky’s big-name shows but I’m sure they would improve over time. The menu now takes up a lot more verticality than before, mirroring a trend you see more and more online, where every website you visit requires at least one scroll before you get to the items of interest.
Scroll down and you’ll get a run of lozenge-buttons that break out various categories of content — TV Shows, Movies, Sport, Kids and the like. (Aside, YouTube really did remove the need for linear music television didn’t it? I haven’t looked at a satellite TV music channel for years but the “Music” button reveals only a handful of remaining channels.) Then you’ll get the linear TV menu, or at least what’s on BBC One and Two — you’ll need to click in to get access to the full TV guide. This has been given a graphical spit-and-polish to take advantage of the screen but is mostly the same as before. There’s a greater emphasis on artwork and good visuals, but Sky has mercifully opted not to fix what wasn’t broken.
Beyond the main TV guide, you get your “Playlist,” which is what Sky has created to replace the idea of a recording. After that, you’ll get a Top 10 list of shows pulled from every Sky user across every one of Sky’s platforms, a banner showing off Sky’s own original and exclusive programming, and a list of Play.Works games. These games are little more than mobile crapware titles — complete with pre-roll ads — that you’ll try once, realize are a waste of your time, and never play again. If there’s one irritation, it’s that the main settings menu is buried at the very bottom of this page, and takes several long presses to reach if you’re in a hurry.
Remote
Daniel Cooper
I’d say most people have an intimate relationship with their remote controls, so often we use them throughout the day. The map of their buttons is laid indelibly onto our subconscious to the point where I think I could probably navigate mine blindfolded. Sky’s remotes are historically best in class for both ergonomics and thumbfeel, but the Glass remote (pictured, right) is a culture shock. Now, I’m averse to saying that just because something is different it is inherently bad, but the process to unlearn half a decades’ worth of training has been a challenge.
Part of this is because Sky has pulled several well-used buttons off the remote to simplify how it works. Some of those functions are now available in an on-screen menu triggered by the remote control equivalent of a hamburger button. Others, Sky would argue, have been replaced by the unit’s automatic curation and voice control features. But it means that things that were previously directly accessible in two seconds now take significantly longer. It is this drive for efficiency that, in some cases, makes things less efficient overall.
Since the days of the Sky+ remote, there has always been a Volume rocker on the left hip of the device and a Channel Up/Down rocker on the right. But, this time around, Sky has ditched the channel Up/Down rocker, and moved the volume rocker over to the opposite side. Similarly, the dedicated transport controls which used to circle the clickpad have also been snipped. Both of those jobs are now the exclusive domain of the clickpad — another chunk of unlearning you’ll need to do if you’re coming from another Sky product.
One consequence of these removals is that there’s now no easy way to Page Up/Down through the EPG like you could with the Channel Up/Down rocker. And you can’t push forward 24 hours using the Fast Forward button like you used to. Now, one of my weekly rituals is to look for which episodes of Columbo — a show I fell in love with during the pandemic — are being broadcast each Sunday. But whereas I could page down and across to find Sunday’s schedule in about 10 seconds with Sky Q, now you have to long press on the click pad. And it takes forever.
Now, my irritations with the button layout notwithstanding, the Glass remote is a very savvy upgrade. The hardware is now coated in a matte rubber that will hopefully not scratch as easily as the previous gloss models did. The overall layout is cleaner, I will admit, and the removal of the text buttons from the number pad — while annoying — makes everything look nicer. Not to mention that the buttons now light up when in use, which helps you in low-light situations and, you know, generally looks pretty cool.
Voice
Sky has been offering voice search for years, but now you can simply bark “Hello Sky” at your TV for it to turn on. Hell, the thing has a motion sensor, and will spring into life if it detects movement in front of it after a long period of stillness (except at night). It’s clear that Sky wants you to use Glass more like a piece of smart home gear than as an old-fashioned TV. And it works most of the time, although my feeling is that it takes two good tries before it understands exactly what you’re saying. When you speak (while there’s something already playing) it’ll often mute the speakers and ask you to go again in order to get a better shot of hearing what’s going on.
Honestly, the ability to just say “Hello Sky” as you walk into a room to turn the TV on (if it hasn’t yet detected your movement) is pretty cool. But we are not, not entirely, at the point where you can rely upon this search functionality as a complete replacement for old-fashioned text search. It doesn’t help that you have to revert back to the remote after your initial query to do anything you actually want to do. So, at this point, it straddles that awkward gulf between a novelty you use only to show off to your neighbours and an everyday essential.
Playlist
There has always been an awkward relationship between those who make and sell movies and TV shows, and those who consume it. The former wants absolute control over how material is distributed and the total profit maximization that ensues. End users, meanwhile, may feel that if they’ve already paid to watch something, they don’t want to be nickeled and dimed into paying again. But between DVDs, and now streaming, the balance of power has been handed in its entirety back to the producers. Sky Glass, if it was possible, goes a step further, stripping you of all of your rights to engage with broadcast material on your own terms.
Doomy thesis statements aside, Sky Glass does not have the ability to locally record broadcast content. In fact, it doesn’t even use the word “record” in the 17-page document sent to reviewers, because it’s no longer a thing. Instead, you have access to your own “Playlist” to which you can add content that you’d like to watch. For on-demand content that is already neatly packaged on a server, either in Sky’s HQ, or Netflix’s, Or Amazon’s, Or the BBC’s, that’s fine. It’s when it comes time to save something that isn’t easily made available on-demand that the real issues start to become apparent. Sky added that there isn’t a storage limit per-se, since all of it is stored on a server somewhere anyway.
Put simply, Sky has a series of digital recorders chopping up and saving programs from live TV as they are broadcast. But, for various obvious legal and contractual reasons, it can’t simply let you access those recordings willy-nilly no matter how much you pay Sky per month. Sadly, the only way you’re going to be able to access any of that material is if you had the foresight to add that particular broadcast to your Playlist ahead of time. But, alas, even if that is the case, you’re not actually going to get the right to watch and “keep” that recording in “perpetuity” like you can with Sky Q.
Match of the Day, as a good example, broadcasts edited highlights of the weekend’s Premier League games on Saturday and Sunday nights. On Sky Q, or any other recording system, I can record the show and watch it at my leisure a day, or a month after the first broadcast. Sky Glass, however, doesn’t let you record the show, but instead directs you to the version available to catch up through BBC iPlayer. Now, because of the Premier League’s close control of its rights, that instalment is pulled a week after first broadcast.
In fact, even things that are recorded via Sky’s cloud recording system are only available for you for twelve months before they are removed.
An even better example comes with reruns of Frasier, which air at 9am on weekday mornings. Even if I set the series to my playlist in good time, none of the episodes are available to watch after the fact because the on-demand rights are blocked. Because the recording is taking place in a server room at a Sky facility somewhere in the UK, it’s no longer under your control. And this is the problem with ceding any and all control back to the content providers, because it comes at the expense of any form of convenience. (Paramount+, meanwhile, is coming to the UK at some point in 2022, and will be available on Sky Glass.) I’d like to remind you at this point that if you max out your Sky subscription, you’ll pay more than a hundred pounds a month for this lack of service.
Reading the user forums on Sky’s website has been instructive here, and some of the earliest Sky Glass adopters aren’t thrilled at the fudge. Certainly, there’s nothing in the TV Guide to let you know that a playlisted show isn’t available to watch afterward. Hell, add Frasier to your own playlist and after broadcast it’ll just show a blank tile, click on that and you’ll be shown a list of episodes broadcasting live that week. And there’s no way ahead of time to know if this is the situation that will greet you when you get home from a long day at work.
One thing that I hope Sky Glass will do is force every broadcaster and streaming platform to audit their metadata. There is nothing worse than looking for a show on-demand, selecting it, and then learning that actually the content included does not match the description. After all, if we’re going to be searching for these things on-demand a lot more frequently, it’s not going to be good enough to simply dump your content online and hope the descriptions are right.
Economics
Sky Glass is available in five colors: Ocean Blue, Dusky Pink, Racing Green, Ceramic White and Anthracite Black. As a standalone purchase, Sky Glass costs £649, £849 and £1,049 for the 43-, 55- and 65-inch models, respectively. But Sky is betting that users would much prefer to fold in that cost to their monthly TV subscription, paying a token figure up-front and spreading the cost over 24, or 48 months interest-free. Users then need to work out which package they want to add to it, with the cheapest being the Sky Ultimate TV bundle (which includes a basic Netflix sub) for £26 a month. It’s £5 extra per month for HDR and Dolby Atmos content, £25 for Sky Sports, £11 for Sky Cinema, and £5 for Sky Kids. (Users can also pay for BT Sport, for an additional £30 per month, with all of these Sky TV packages running on a 31-day rolling contract.) In addition, it appears that after the first year, users will also need to pony up an additional £5 per-month to be able to skip ads from inside the ITV Hub, STV Player and All4 apps.
Here’s an easier breakdown of the prices and what you can expect to shell out, both for your TV and for the content to fuel it.
Sky
The one problem is that it’s tricky to quantify what sort of rival TVs we should compare this to, if any. After all, most regular TVs require dedicated soundbars and a set-top-box so it would be unfair to run this side-by-side with a standard set of panels at these dimensions. But I can set myself a budget there, or thereabouts, and see what sort of goodies I can turn up.
Panel-wise, Hisense’s A7-series is a good place to start, since you can get a 43-, 55- and 65-inch panel depending on your need. Each one is a Quantum Dot 4K set including HDR 10+, Dolby Vision, a 60Hz refresh rate and voice control through Google Assistant or Alexa. Depending on the panel size you go for, this will set you back £399, £499 or £699, which gives you headroom enough to find a half-decent soundbar. Sadly, the cheapest Dolby Atmos-equipped soundbar I could find was JBL’s Bar 5.0, which sets you back £249. Thankfully, Sky Q’s cheap, so there is a chance you could avoid being locked into this new content dystopia for some time yet.
Now, if you so choose to buy Sky Glass and then not continue with your Sky subscription (once Glass is paid for, or bought outright), then it’ll still work. The company says that the three HDMI ports and built-in soundbar will all work fine, and the app will still enable you to access third-party apps. The only friction you’ll apparently notice is that you’ll need to re-sign in to all of the apps that you’re using on the system. You can also watch Digital Terrestrial TV by plugging in the requisite aerial and setting it up as required.
Should you buy it?
The one downside of making any sort of pronouncement about a Sky product is that Sky Glass’ proliferation is almost inevitable. After all, history shows that Sky is happy to gently reduce the price of its hardware products to help get its services into more homes. I have no doubt that while, for now, Sky Glass is a pricey option, in a year or two it’ll be discounted enough that it’s impossible to ignore.
And I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted one purely because it offers a level of simplicity and elegance that you simply don’t get with most regular TVs. Banishing the bulk of the sprawl and ensuring that your TV corner stops looking like a server room is something to aspire toward. Certainly, Sky Glass — on paper — is a fantastic idea, and the execution is pretty good in almost every regard.
It’s just that buying Sky Glass ensures you are forever yoked to the devil’s bargain of being reminded, constantly, that you have no control. The sharp elbows of the content licensing giants means that things you wanted to record at your convenience can now not be relied upon. If a media giant in California doesn’t think you deserve to watch a daytime TV show when you get in from work, then you don’t get that opportunity.
There’s a very reasonable solution to this problem, of course, which is that Sky should throw in a HDD into this hardware. I don’t believe for a moment that there isn’t the space, and there should be no technical limitations as to why you can’t with this system on chip. For the majority of shows, you can watch them on-demand without any fuss, and for everything else, you can have a local recording free from the clutches of content licensing restrictions.
If you’ve rolled your eyes at the back half of this review, and honestly see no need to worry and fuss about access to recordings, then Sky Glass is for you. But if you’re even a little bit concerned about the lack of freedom that such a system brings, I’d say hold fire for now.
One of the problems with the traditional weight belts or vests is that they’re often bulky and ill-suited to you retaining your full range of motion. It’s a problem that Omorpho is looking to tackle with its new Gravity Sportswear, which spreads the weight across the garment. The rationale for this, and the use of what it’s calling MicroLoad Spheres which are dotted all over like Michael B. Jordan’s torso from Black Panther, is to offer greater resistance during workouts, but not at the expense of movement.
Omorpho may be a new company but it comes from some pretty experienced names, since it was founded by 21-year Nike veteran Stefan Olander. He is joined by a group of former Nike employees which have worked to build the clothes and finesse this system of weighting clothes. The process of developing the garments has reportedly taken more than three years, and uses premium fabrics in the construction. And there are a number of big-name athletes pitching the clothes, including Julio Jones, Maria Sharapova and Annie Kunz.
The entire collection, which includes long and short-sleeve tops, vests and leggings, is available to buy from Omorpho's website today. Prices start from $150 for the biker short, through to $400 for the beefiest G-Vests, all of which have a set weight that they can add to your daily workout.
Google has escaped the risk of a lawsuit after violating the privacy of around 5.4 million iPhone users in the UK. The UK’s Supreme Court has ruled that it cannot allow a US-style Class Action suit to be lobbed at the search giant after it deliberately created a workaround to track Safari users. The judgment, read by Lord Leggatt, was focused on procedural matters, like the intersection between Google, based in the US, and the UK’s data protection laws. More importantly, however, was the issue of “damage,” and the fact that the claimants — led by consumer rights champion Richard Lloyd — had not established that any material harm had been caused by Google’s workaround.
The story begins in 2017 with Lloyd, and many others, formed a group called “Google You Owe Us” to attempt to sue the company. It alleged that Google had illegally collected data on iPhone users between June 2011 and February 2012 in violation of UK law. The matter hinged on the fact that Google had deliberately created a workaround to get access to data it was not otherwise entitled to. Lloyd and crew lost at the High Court, but this initial decision was overturned by the UK’s Court of Appeal, saying that it was quite proper for Google to face a courtroom after the intentional misuse of personal data without consent.
US-style Class Action lawsuits are not common, or even really a thing in UK law, although it is possible for a large group of litigants to bring a joint action. Lloyd and his cohort were trying to establish that Google’s tracking was, in and of itself, harmful, and by extension a standard level of compensation could be calculated. This was the fact that the Supreme Court rejected most clearly — saying that a set figure (reportedly pegged around £750 (around $1,000) per affected user) was not fair redress.
David Barker of Pinsent Masons — the firm Google hired to fight this case — wrote that the decision upholds the notion that compensation can only be asked for where real harm has been caused. And that, put simply, Google’s aggregation of personal data was insufficient to cause any real-world harm or mental distress. Richard Lloyd, who brought the action, told Sky News that he was “bitterly disappointed” that the court had “failed to do enough to protect the public from Google and other Big Tech firms who break the law.” And that this ruling, in effect, is the writing of a blank check for large technology companies to keep misusing user data without fear of censure. He added that it is time for government leaders to step in and craft laws to better clamp down on the misuse of personal data.
FC Barcelona, one of football’s biggest clubs, is auctioning off NFTs “based on some of the club’s historic moments.” Details are scarce for now, but it appears as if the club will allow fans to bid on clips of highlights in a style similar to that of NBA Top Shot. The transactions will take place through Ownix, a new Ethereum-based marketplace which will offer auctions for digital trinkets in a variety of categories. The company says that the Barcelona NFTs will be selected by a “special joint committee” and then minted, first as unique one-off auctions, and then later as a broader limited edition or collection. Ownix, which is emerging from stealth with this announcement, currently has a fairly limited selection of items to purchase, including some SquidGame and Batman-themed fan art, plus whatever the hell this is.
Barcelona’s decision to begin selling NFTs may have been prompted by the debt crisis the club is currently in, with debts reported around $1.56 billion this summer. The club’s previous leadership is accused of reckless spending on a number of players on high wages that have subsequently underperformed. This summer, the club was forced into a fire sale and, due to rules on how big its wage bill could be, was unable to retain Lionel Messi, one of the world’s most successful players. That NFTs are, essentially, the definition of money for old rope, means that it's the sort of financial opportunity a club like Barcelona are incapable of turning down right now.
The club isn't alone in leaping feet-first into the cryptocurrency mire, with many major names offering "Fan Tokens" through Socios. That company offers clubs the ability to mint their own coins and use it to run engagement schemes with their fans. But, unlike real socios — the Spanish word for the members who own a real ownership stake in their club — these tokens will only allow you to take part in polls set out by the club's leadership, enter competitions, and so on. But despite the obvious limitations, Socios is already making money, and when France's Paris Sant-Germain signed Lionel Messi, part of his "welcome package" was a bundle of these tokens, believed to be worth (at the time) up to $34 million.
Let’s be honest, it’s been a rough decade at this point, and things seem to be getting worse rather than better. Online radicalization has seen many of the world’s political systems spin out of control to the point of uselessness. Climate change is a problem facing literally all of us that few in power seem interested in addressing. And our economic situation seems to be predicated on everyone buying lots of stuff all the time, despite the fact that most of the cost of living is swallowed up by housing. It’s a lot, and things can feel generally very bleak right now.
But, as the proverb says, it is always better to light a candle than it is to curse the darkness, so we’ve brought some matches. Today is a good time to try and make a positive impact in the world by backing organizations that can make the world a little better for all of us. That includes helping to better educate future generations, making life easier for kids who need serious medical care, or are in poverty, as well as addressing the climate crisis. This could never be an exhaustive list of good causes to donate to, but we’ve tried to pick out charities and non-profits whose general aims are probably already supported by Engadget readers.
Able Gamers
Able Gamers
Able Gamers is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 30-0533750. It has been given a 97/100 score by Charity Navigator.
Able Gamers was set up in 2004 to help people with disabilities to play video games and to make games more accessible overall. Given that video gaming can often help connect people over long distances, its use to combat isolation has never been more relevant.
As well as working with individuals, it has a large role in advocating for better game and peripheral design to help empower players. Its most notable achievement, arguably, is its involvement in creating Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller.
Bridging Tech is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 85-1031712. It has not yet been evaluated or given a score by Charity Navigator.
Bridging Tech was founded by a pair of Stanford students concerned that COVID-19 would exacerbate inequalities in the education system. The transition to online learning risked leaving behind a number of children who lacked access to their own computer and internet connection.
That’s where Bridging Tech comes in, receiving donated laptops, refurbishing them for educational use and taking them to children affected by homelessness. The team’s focus is getting devices in the hands of K-12 students living in shelters across many cities in the US.
It’s early days, but so far Bridging Tech has taken in 2,653 devices and has plans to expand in the near future. It works with Computers 2 Kids (C2K) which helps process and refurbish the machines ready to be handed to a child in need.
There are two ways in which you can support Bridging Tech: Either with a financial donation, or by handing over your old machine. If you are in college, meanwhile, you can sign up to help tutor a homeless child, coaching them through subjects and their SAT or ACT examinations.
Child’s Play is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 20-3584556. It has been given a 100/100 score by Charity Navigator.
Child’s Play is a non-profit that donates toys and games to children’s hospitals and domestic violence shelters around the world. The group also ensures that the titles on offer are relevant and appropriate for the environment and can be used as an educational or therapeutic tool.
Of course, a big part of the group’s mission is to make staying in hospital less of a traumatic experience for children. Being able to play a video game helps kids with long-term care needs to feel like they’re in a comforting, home-like environment.
You can support Child’s Play with a financial donation, as well as buying merchandise from its store. In addition, a number of hospitals have dedicated Amazon wishlists which, should you wish to support a local (or far away) facility.
Clean Air Task Force is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 04-3512550. It has been given a 93.72/100 score by Charity Navigator.
The Clean Air Task Force is a body that works with lawmakers to push for climate-friendly policies. It was founded in 1996 with the aim of getting old, coal-fired power plants to be held to the same emissions standards as new plants.
Since then, the group has worked to advocate for further reductions in carbon emissions from energy generation. As Vox reported last year, the CATF was lauded both by Founders Pledge and Giving Green for its success at promoting bi-partisan cooperation on emissions laws.
You can support the Clean Air Task Force with an online donation, wire transfer or even by making a gift of stocks or other securities.
Code.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 46-0858543. It has been given a 100/100 score by Charity Navigator.
Code.org is a non-profit organization which aims to expand access to computer science in schools. Its mission is to give every child the opportunity to study the subject and, in fact, it provides much of the K12-curriculum in a number of US schools. In addition, it offers a wide variety of courses for you to try at home at no cost, which are pitched at pretty much any age group. I’ve been letting my five-year-old have a go at some of the very basic coding tutorials and she loves them so much it’s hard to get my iPad back from her.
If you want to support Code.org, you can make a financial donation, or get involved with your local school’s program. That can be as simple as asking the school to teach computer science (using Code.org’s classroom materials) and there are materials online to teach your own kids how to code. In addition, if you are a software engineer, you can volunteer your time to be a guest speaker in a classroom or teach an “Hour of Code” session. If you can speak a different language, meanwhile, you can contribute to translating educational materials.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 04-3091431. It has been given a 94.9/100 score by Charity Navigator.
Obviously, any round-up of good causes to support within the tech sector starts with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Founded in 1990, the organization has a mission to protect free expression, privacy and digital security, and uphold the rights of individuals all over the world. The body has worked to improve voting security in the US, battling frivolous lawsuits that threaten free speech and critiquing badly-written, illiberal or generally stupid legislation.
You can support the EFF with a cash donation, as well as gifts of stock, cryptocurrencies and through AmazonSmile purchases. While it has previously accepted donations of hardware, it’s not currently doing so, although you can donate your vehicle to its cause. If you want to support the body with your own skills, you can volunteer to help, with coders, translators, technologists, community organizers, attorneys, researchers and designers all required.
Girls Who Code is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, EIN: 30-0728021. It has been given a 100/100 score by Charity Navigator.
Girls Who Code is a non-profit organization with the aim of encouraging girls to study STEM, specifically computer science, subjects. It runs a series of classes for young women as after school clubs, short courses and summer schools.
For instance, newbie coders can sign up to a Girls Who Code Club, and spend one or two hours a week learning the basics of software development. These are run for grades 3-12 in K-12 schools, as well as in 200 colleges across the US. The body says that it has already helped teach computer science to 450,000 girls, with half of that figure coming from “historically underrepresented groups.”
You can support Girls Who Code with a financial donation, via Classy.org, or they can set up a club to help train more coders locally. Would-be club leaders need access to technology and a space at a school, library or other public space for one or two hours a week, and will be required to pass a background check.
For most of this year, Facebook has been talking about its plans for the metaverse, pledging to lose a lot of money in order to bolster its ambitions in the space. Yesterday, the company announced that it would rebrand its corporate identity to “Meta” in order to double down on this commitment. (And, you know, the other reason.) The metaverse, as Meta describes it, “is a new phase of interconnected virtual experiences using technologies like virtual and augmented reality.” Given the number of companies who are now starting to talk about the metaverse in very real terms, we have to answer one, very obvious question: What the Hell is a metaverse?
Everything that follows is, to a certain extent, meant to be read with the right number of ahs, ahems, polite coughs and other caveats. After all, a number of companies have started using the term in order to bask in the reflected glory thrown out by the metaverse hype train. Much like “Web 2.0,” “The metaverse” has a loosey-goosey definition that is being used to define whatever is coming next for the internet. A virtual world that mirrors our own? Metaverse. A way to buy and sell NFTs of Elon Musk dressed as a dog? Metaverse. A new way of creating commerce and communications? Metaverse. It’s likely that when we look back at the metaverse a decade or two from now, should it actually happen, it’ll look vastly different to what its boosters predict.
In his Founders Letter, CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes the metaverse as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” He goes on to talk about how “in this future, you will be able to teleport instantly as a hologram to be at the office without a commute, at a concert with friends, or in your parents’ living room to catch up.” And then cites the benefits of that, including a reduced carbon footprint and less time stuck in traffic.
The easiest and most obvious point of comparison is the metaverse as represented in pop culture. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (where the term originates), Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One and the Wachowskis’ The Matrix are all examples of this virtual, digital-world-that-actually-mirrors-our-own. Those with (long) internet memories will recall projects like Second Life, which promised to do this sort of thing 18 years ago. And some folks have suggested that Roblox and Fortnite, which are both games and virtual spaces where stuff other than games takes place, are forms of metaverse.
Meta’s interest is clear as a way of building out its work in the virtual space through its acquisition of Oculus. Sir Nick Clegg, who after his political defenestration and inexplicable Knighting became Facebook’s vice president of Global Affairs and Communications in 2018, wrote that the metaverse is designed to create a “greater sense of ‘virtual presence.’” The Guardian reported that Clegg claims to use Meta’s virtual presence service, Horizon Workrooms, to take his “Monday morning meetings in the metaverse with a virtual table and whiteboard.” You may be thinking, then, that the metaverse will be little more than Zoom but with a requirement to spend more to own some pricey VR gear.
Alexandru Voica, Meta’s Technology Communications Manager in Europe, says that a better way to understand the metaverse is as “the next evolution of the internet.” He used the video call we were on as an example of something that the metaverse could hopefully improve. “We’re meeting in this 2D video call, and it’s great compared to a phone call but it’s not as good as if we were sitting together [in the real world],” he said, “The idea is, how can you take this interaction and get it as close to you and I being together [in a public space].” He added that the metaverse wasn’t envisioned as supplanting real-world connections, but to make virtual experiences more lifelike.
Voica added that these virtual engagements will feel a lot more real with the use of technologies like VR, AR and spatial audio. When you have a series of boxes on a Zoom screen, for instance, it’s harder for your brain to process all of that information at once. In the virtual world, with people’s audio directed toward you from wherever their avatar is sitting, it’s easier for you to engage.
Some of this feeds back to Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Next Decade’ manifesto from the start of 2020, where improvements in AR and VR technology will better empower remote work. Obviously that was before COVID-19 made remote work a necessity for millions of people, and before it became one of the defining culture-war non-issues this year.
Another common frame of reference is Matthew Ball’s essay on what a metaverse is from January 2020. At the time, he said that any metaverse would be a persistent and synchronous virtual environment with its own economy. Ball added that the metaverse would enable “would-be laborers” to “participate in the ‘high value’ economy via virtual labor.” He cited the practice of Gold Farming — where players of a large MMO in a low-wage country works for hours to earn large amounts of virtual currency (or goods) which they then sell on to other players for real-world cash — as a current example of this “virtual labor.”
Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images
Ball went on to say that the metaverse would also offer “unprecedented interoperability of data.” A user would be able to move objects freely between worlds, like being able to take a skin for a gun in Counter-Strike and carry it over to Fortnite. To be honest, the idea that games publishers would agree to the free-sharing of their intellectual property, with all the lost profits that would entail, is the most unbelievable idea in the document.
But even Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney is open to the idea of some cross-communication in some form or another. This July, Sweeney told The New York Times that said a “tunnel” could exist between, in this example, the virtual worlds of Roblox and Fortnite. What’s not clear, however, is what a user could take from one end of that tunnel to the other beyond their own, custom-designed avatar.
Voica says that this cross-sharing of IP will be vital to ensuring the success of the metaverse. He used the example of a user buying a designer jacket, as a digital item which could be worn by their avatar as they went about their day. That item doesn’t have any value if you’re only able to wear it in the specific designer’s own virtual world. “It would be like buying a Manchester United shirt and only being able to wear it inside Manchester United’s stadium,” he said. And he believes that consumers wouldn’t buy into a system with such a limitation, saying that “people don’t want to be locked in.”
There’s also a line of thinking that a metaverse will actually describe the unification of the digital and real worlds. AR glasses that overlay a rich data set onto the street as you go about your day, outsourcing tasks from your own brain. That will, naturally, require smart glasses with transparent displays capable of actually reproducing this data in a useful manner. Not to mention a quantum leap in computer vision, data processing and battery life to make it viable for whole-day use. This, of course, will also require a dramatic shift in how we view privacy in public and private spaces a decade on from the privacy objections raised when Google Glass was briefly en vogue.
This September, The Washington Post interviewed Sima Sistani, the co-founder of Houseparty who now works for Epic Games. They said that the metaverse would be the thing that replaces Social Media to suck away all of our free time. Sistani believes that, unlike now, where people simply create images and post status updates, the next generation will enjoy collaborative experiences with one another. And that the next generation of content creators will create fresh experiences for the rest of us to enjoy, once we’ve paid for them.
One of the things that is kinda/sorta clear, at least from the metaverse’s boosters, is that the platform won’t be owned by a single person or company. Instead, it will — hopefully — operate much like the internet does now, with multiple providers offering infrastructure to build a cohesive whole. Or at least, that’s the theory, and there’s the additional hope that decentralized technologies will help reduce the potential for a single arbiter to rule over this new frontier.
Projects like Decentraland, its own virtual environment, are already working on this principle, with its economy running on Ethereum’s blockchain. As The New York Times reported earlier this year, Decentraland’s market has already seen real-world brokers buying up parcels of virtual real estate. And there are already art shows and casinos in operation inside Decentraland, all of which can be tied to some form of digital commerce. This is sadly at-odds with the potential for a post-scarcity digital utopia that a metaverse could theoretically foster.
Pop-culture descriptions of metaverses commonly present them less as a social good and more as a symptom of impending collapse. Even the reference onanism that is Ready Player One shows a world that has slid into economic, social and environmental decline. When asked about the metaverse, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel cited Snow Crash’s “virtual world created by an evil monopolist.” Not long after, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey agreed that Neal Stephenson’s novel was intended as a warning, rather than a guide. [An aside, in Snow Crash, poor users accessing the metaverse through a public terminal are rendered in monochrome, and are derided by the wider society as a consequence — something that was replicated in the real-world by Fortnite players who bullied “Default” players who didn’t buy custom skins for their avatars.]
Now, Meta believes enough in the metaverse that it’s hoisted its flag, and fortune, to the idea for the next few years. And it’s hard to think that, however convenient, its metaversal ambitions are a smokescreen for the very real issues the platform is currently facing. Titles like Roblox and Fortnite provide a vague sense of how a persistent, universal online world could hold the attention of users for thousands of hours, but those are for now curated experiences. And projects like Decentraland offer a hint as to how a virtual economy would function, but nothing yet gives us a cohesive grand narrative of the metaverse which can show us where it’s going. In many ways, companies like Meta are trying to put together this jigsaw without much of an idea of what it’s going to look like when it’s finished.
Zound, the Swedish company which produces headphones under the Urbanears and Marshall brands, is bringing its true wireless audio smarts to its line of Adidas headphones. Today, it is pushing out a trio of true wireless buds for folks who want to look sporty and stylish without compromising on quality.
The flagship is the Z.N.E. 01 ANC, a pair of active noise-cancelling buds with swappable ear tips and subtle, three-stripes branding. You’ll get 20 hours of life from a charge, with 4.5 in the buds and an additional 15.5 hours in the case. (It will be interesting to see how these stack up against Zound/Marshall's recently-announced Motif ANC, which come from the same company and share plenty of DNA.)
The ANC-less standard model, the Z.N.E. 01 are much more like a pair of bog-standard TWS buds, complete with the standard Adidas logo awkwardly stamped on the side. These don’t pack the custom ear tips, but what it lacks in style and features, it makes up for in battery life: 5 hours in each bud, and a further 20 in the case itself.
Rounding out the trio is the FWD-02 Sport, a pair of running-friendly buds with swappable ear tips and wings, a force sensor, so you can control it while wearing gloves, and IPX5 rating to defend against sweat and rain. These, too, will run six hours in your ear, with the charging case providing an additional 19 hours of juice before you need to head back to an outlet.
The Z.N.E. 01 and 01 ANC are available to order now, priced at $189 and $99, respectively, while the FWD-02 Sport can be pre-ordered today for $169, and will start shipping at some point in November.
It’s been four years since Oura launched its second-generationsmart ring, but the company hasn’t been out of the spotlight in all of that time. Oura rings found themselves on the fingers of a number of high-profile figures and a number of studies used it to determine if wearable technology could predict COVID-19 symptoms. Now, the Finnish company is announcing its third-generation ring with an even greater emphasis on cramming as much hardware into that tiny body as the laws of physics will allow.
The v3 Oura Ring doesn’t look much different compared to its predecessor, and isn’t — at least on the outside. Inside, however, the company has sweated several new components down to fit inside its chassis, including a new optical heart-rate sensor. That unit alone will let the wearable track your heart rate during the day — something it’s only been able to do at night so far. In addition, you’ll also get heart rate tracking during workouts, and even get blood oxygenation readings.
With new improved continuous temperature monitoring, Oura’s makers believe that the new model will be far better at predicting when periods will begin. The company added that you can expect more accurate sleep tracking, although the insights related to that won’t be available until at some point early next year. You’ll also get data about how relaxed and rested you are to better enable you to take some time out as, and when, you need it.
You may have noticed that many wearables companies have pivoted toward getting that sweet, sweet recurring revenue in recent years. Oura is no exception, and for $5.99 a month you can get “daily health insights, personalized recommendations, exclusive audio, educational videos and more.” If you sign up for the membership, you’ll also get a discount on the price of the new ring, which will set you back $299 when it begins shipping at some point in November.
