ByteDance has announced that Douyin, the version of TikTok for China, will introduce new limits for minors under 14. These minors will now be limited to just 40 minutes of use per day and can’t access the app at all between 10 PM and 6 AM.

ByteDance is also urging parents to add in more comprehensive user data to avoid kids lying about their age to get around the ban. At the same time, the company unveiled a new TikTok-esque app called Xiao Qu Xing ("Little Fun Star"), which offers short educational videos.

This is another fairly dramatic move as part of China’s broader crackdown on digital media and video games. Officials have recently described gaming as “spiritual opium” and limited kids playtime to just three hours a week.

Chinese leaders are reportedly concerned that children are becoming addicted to video games, which is having a detrimental effect on their development. The science behind video game addiction is controversial and disputed, with research into the condition ongoing.

Either way, the changes to Douyin aren’t likely to be that wide ranging in isolation since it’s thought that less than half a percent of users are under 14. It’s just the overall trend that’s likely to be worth keeping an eye on, especially if this anti-game rhetoric spreads to other countries.

— Dan Cooper

Ikea's new $40 wireless charging pad mounts underneath your desk or table

No more drilling or unsightly charging plates on your table, desk or nightstand.

IKEA

When I added an Ikea-branded wireless charging plate to my Ikea nightstand, I had to buy a custom Ikea hole saw to drill through into the top. As it turned out, Ikea furniture is sufficiently weak that I managed to scorch the wood and the paint with just the friction of the saw. The charging plate was, mercifully, big enough to cover the burn marks, so I never got any lectures about being bad at DIY. I had, however, learned my lesson that drilling out a QI charger was not my forte.

Ikea seems to feel similarly and has now launched the new Sjömärke QI charger, which is strong enough to charge a phone from the underside of your desk. You can glue or screw the chunky $40 unit to the underside of a suitable wooden or plastic table top. Then, all you have to do is drop your phone on the right spot and watch as about 5W of juice wafts into your phone. Or, at least, you will when it arrives in October.

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ZTE Axon 30 review: An 'invisible' selfie camera comes at a cost

That cost being… awful selfies.

Mat Smith

ZTE’s Axon 30 is one of those rare smartphones offering a (pretty much) invisible front-facing camera. The lack of notch, punch-hole or cut-out means users can take full advantage of the 30’s gorgeous, 6.92-inch, 2,460 x 1,080 120Hz AMOLED display. But, for $500, there are a couple of teeny-weeny compromises you’ll have to accept, including, er, lackluster selfies. We won’t spoil the rest of Mat Smith’s review but, suffice it to say, his feelings on this handset are pretty complicated.

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iOS 15 is now available

Your iPad, Watch and Apple TV will also get updated operating systems.

Cherlynn Low

iOS 15 and its device-specific cousins have now arrived and are making their way to your tech as we speak. Some of the biggest new features include upgraded FaceTime and Messages, better notifications and a Google Lens-esque Live Text function. Some of the more notable features announced at WWDC haven’t arrived just yet, including SharePlay, but those are expected to drop later in the year. At the same time, Apple showed off the full trailer for Finch, the Tom Hanks-fronted post-apocalyptic movie about a man, his dog and his robot trying to survive after the world ends. I imagine it’s a bit like if Cormac McCarthy had written Turner and Hooch after watching Short Circuit.

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US officials can't decide if Honor smartphones are a national security threat

Uh-oh.

Honor

When Huawei went on the US entity list, the Chinese giant was prevented from working with pretty much every tech company worth mentioning. Huawei couldn’t source chips from Intel or Qualcomm or get software help (and Play Store access) from Google. Consequently, Huawei spun out and sold off Honor, its budget division, for it to thrive free from the sanctions threatening its own future as a global brand.

Unfortunately, those best laid plans may be undone by a quartet of federal agencies who are deciding if Honor should go on the same entity list. Reports suggest that teams from the Pentagon and Department of Energy are in favor of addition, while the Commerce and State Departments are against. If this deadlock can’t be solved, however, the decision could ultimately end up on Joe Biden’s desk to sort out.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

Apple's 2022 iPhones could feature notch-less designs, but not in-display Touch ID

DoorDash expands alcohol deliveries to 20 states and DC

OnePlus' 2022 flagship will share a unified Android 13 system with Oppo

Roku's new Streaming Stick 4K gets Dolby Vision, HDR10+ and better Wi-Fi

Roku OS 10.5 adds better voice support, 5.1 Roku speaker configurations

The mastermind behind a seven-year scheme to illegally unlock AT&T handsets has been sentenced to 12 years in jail. Muhammad Fahd unlocked phones for ineligible customers who still had to pay off the cost of their smartphone. AT&T says 1.9 million handsets were unlocked in this manner, and it lost around $201.5 million because of the scheme.

Fahd contacted and subsequently bribed an AT&T employee to help unlock devices until the company locked down the system. Consequently, Fahd commissioned malware to be installed on AT&T’s internal systems, which captured data on both the company and its employees. Fahd was indicted in 2017, arrested in Hong Kong a year later and extradited to the US in 2019.

Perhaps the most staggering part of the story is the lengths Fahd went to keep the project going. It’s not clear if Fahd’s malware put any customer data at risk, but that a scheme like this was able to run for so long is troubling.

— Dan Cooper

Ultra-white paint could reduce the need for air conditioning

Someone stop Anish Kapoor from getting hold of this.

Purdue University / John Underwood

Pretty much everyone knows you can make your house a lot cooler if you paint it white, which is common practice in warmer countries. Now, however, a team of scientists at Purdue University has cooked up the ultimate white paint, which, they claim, works so well it could eliminate the need for air conditioning. The covering supposedly reflects 98.1 percent of all solar radiation, theoretically leaving the surface cooler than the surrounding environment. If it works and it’s implemented properly, it could reduce the global energy bill by quite a figure.

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Netflix and Apple TV+ clean up at the Emmys with 'The Crown' and 'Ted Lasso'

HBO is the only ‘traditional’ broadcaster who earned more than streamers.

Apple TV+, Warner Bros.

In 2020, Apple TV+ was proud to earn just one primetime Emmy for The Morning Show’s Billy Crudup. A year later and the nascent streamer managed to take home 11 trophies, with breakout hit Ted Lasso earning seven of those on its own. In fact, while HBO remains the top dog of this particular awards show, Netflix’s The Crown won most of the big drama nods. It’s clear that streaming services are swallowing the world whole, and the challenge of formerly blue-chip broadcasters is to somehow up the ante on their well-heeled rivals.

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Microsoft's Surface Pro 8 might include a 120Hz screen and Thunderbolt ports

September 22nd is just a few days away.

Shadow Leak, Twitter

Microsoft has a big event coming September 22nd, and an image, via Twitter user Shadow_Leak, purporting to be a store listing suggests the Surface Pro 8 might get some big improvements. New features for the slate include a narrow-bezel, 120Hz display, dual Thunderbolt ports and an 11th-generation Intel Core processor. Given how the Surface Pro has become such a mainstay of Microsoft’s hardware lineup, it’s always exciting to see some dramatic changes year on year.

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NTSB head says Tesla must address 'basic safety issues' with semi-autonomous features

Regulators are not happy with how Tesla operates or markets its technology.

Roberto Baldwin

The new head of the National Transportation Safety Board has advised Tesla to get its house in order. In an interview, Jennifer Homendy said she took issue with how Tesla tests, operates and markets its self-driving technology. That includes the “misleading and irresponsible” way it sells Full Self Driving, which encourages people to “misuse and abuse” it. In addition, Homendy said the company needed to address “basic safety issues” rather than focus on headline-grabbing new features. Homendy’s words don’t mean much yet in a policy sense, but it might set the tone on how the NTSB chooses to deal with companies like Tesla in future.

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Harley-Davidson will sell its retro-inspired e-bike by the end of 2021

It’s a beauty but, oh boy, is it expensive.

Harley Davidson

Were you disappointed when Harley-Davidson showed off a gorgeous, retro-inspired e-bike then didn’t put it on sale? Thankfully, someone at the company heard your sighs of frustration and is going to release a version, called the MOSH/TRIBUTE, towards the end of this year. Unfortunately, no matter how pretty this thing is, there’ll only be a limited release of 650, and it’ll cost you $5,999 for the privilege of owning one. But, you know, it is pretty.

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India says Google abused Android dominance

It’s the conclusion of a two-year antitrust probe

India’s competition authority has found Google abused its dominant position to box out potential rivals. A two-year probe into how the search giant does business on the subcontinent has found the company in violation of the local competition law. Regulators took issue with how Google prevents manufacturers from using forked versions of Android, and the “arbitrary” nature of the Play Store’s policies. India joins an ever-growing list of countries that have probed Google’s business dealings and found something isn’t right. Regulators have yet to decide if Google’s conduct was illegal and if fines need to be handed out, but given what happened in South Korea just a few days back, we shouldn’t be surprised.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

Amazon has banned over 600 Chinese brands as part of review fraud crackdown

Israel reportedly used a remote-controlled gun to assassinate an Iranian scientist

Cadillac's inaugural Lyriq EV sold out of reservations in 10 minutes

US probe into Binance reportedly expands to investigate insider trading

It’s been a decade, more or less, since GoPro crested into the mainstream as the name in small, portable, rugged action cameras. Since then, the company has continued to refine its flagship product, all while defending itself from cheaper fly-by-night competitors. Our James Trew has reviewed the new GoPro Hero 10 Black, which can shoot footage in 5.3K and take 23-megapixel stills from inside that notoriously sturdy housing.

We won’t spoil the bones of his review, but suffice to say the improvements in hardware and shooting technology are certainly welcome. Sadly, you might see a hit in battery life, but GoPro says customers aren’t trying to shoot theatrical movies on a single charge. If there’s one thing James really wasn’t a fan of, though, it was the price, which is $50 more than the last model, even if you subscribe to GoPro’s unlimited cloud backup service.

— Dan Cooper

IKEA's ASUS ROG gaming collection comes to the US and UK this October

But beware the dangers of the gamer tax

IKEA / ASUS

IKEA and ASUS’ Republic of Gamers division teamed up last year to build more gamer-friendly furniture and gear. Now, the product of that union is coming to the US and Europe after making its debut in Asia. The range includes a sculpted wooden hand to hold your headphones (or, at a push, VR headset) gaming chairs, storage and even a powered sit–stand desk. Bear in mind, however, some of the products are just regular IKEA doodads painted black, with $3 added to the price.

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AMC theaters will accept cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin

The company is leaning hard into its ‘meme stock’ status.

AMC CEO Adam Aron has announced the theatre chain will soon accept more than just Bitcoin at its cash registers. In a tweet, Aron said, by the end of the year, AMC would also accept Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash for ticket purchases and at concession stands. The move is likely to boost the company’s relationship with the army of meme-stock traders who provided succor to the beleaguered company in the worst of the pandemic.

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T-Mobile will start offering in-store phone repairs on November 1st

500 stores will offer repairs to Protection subscribers.

T-Mobile has announced it’ll start offering in-store repairs at 500 of its locations on November 1st. Customers who pay for the monthly Protection package can get their broken smartphone repaired on the same day. The company says that “highly credentialed” Assurant technicians will do the work using parts approved by the manufacturer. It’s a good start, especially since getting your phone repaired can be an unbearable chore. Hopefully initiatives like this, coupled with some decent right-to-repair legislation, will make it less of a headache in future.

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Ford will spend $250 million to boost F-150 Lightning production

The company has 150,000 reservations for the electric truck.

Ford

Ford will invest a further $250 million to increase production capacity for its F150 Lightning electric truck. The vehicle, which seems staggeringly popular, currently has around 150,000 reservations waiting to be fulfilled. That cash will go on recruiting more workers both to produce the car and the components needed to make it work, like drivetrains and batteries. Sadly, it won’t be until 2022 that Ford will see the benefit of that investment, but it needs to do something to ensure it doesn’t lose sales to its EV pickup-truck rivals.

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Lucid's limited edition Air EV rated for a Tesla-beating 520 miles of EPA range

For comparison, Tesla's Model S with a 100kWh battery pack has a 402-mile EPA range.

Lucid

Don’t shoot the messenger, EV fans, but Lucid says its Air EV has an EPA range of 520 miles on a charge. That’s 100 miles or so more than you could expect out of a fully specced Tesla Model S LRP with the 100kWh battery pack. CEO Peter Rawlinson was bullish, saying its battery management and drivetrain technology is tremendously efficient. Then again, it’s easy to make promises: The real proof will be when we can try this car out for ourselves.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

Microsoft Office 2021 will be available on October 5th

Samsung begins manufacturing 14-inch 90Hz OLED displays

Former 'Destiny' composer could owe Bungie almost $100,000

Netflix is making a heist series you can watch in any order

Microsoft isn’t so much declaring war on passwords as bragging about a successful first strike against them. The Windows maker has announced users can now remove the password from their Microsoft account in favor of something that’s (hopefully) more secure.

The feature, which had already rolled out to enterprise users, will let you ditch your password and leverage Windows Hello’s biometric security tools. Alternatively, you can grab your phone and use the Windows Authenticator app to grant you access to your machine.

Given that passwords have now become such a pain for so many people to use, switching to something more elegant is welcome news. Of course, for this news to drop at the same time as the announcement that Microsoft had to patch a fairly substantial security vulnerability in Office is slightly less comforting.

— Dan Cooper

New York passes law that bans all gas-powered car sales by 2035

It just has to work out how to integrate the necessary infrastructure.

The state of New York has passed a bill banning the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 which, it hopes, will help slash the state’s emissions. It’s the third major US state to do so, after California and Massachusetts, while Washington state tried, but the bill was vetoed. Given the scale of the challenge to get New York EV-ready, leaders have already tasked a number of agencies to start working on a zero-emissions vehicle masterplan. That will include creating a market for zero-emission vehicles, rolling out charging infrastructure and developing incentives for purchase.

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Xiaomi's 11T Pro smartphone supports Dolby Vision and charges in 17 minutes

The company also announced a new tablet and wearable.

Xiaomi

Xiaomi’s new device launch includes the flagship X11T Pro, the romantically named superphone with a number of gee-whizz features. That includes 120W HyperCharge technology that promises to juice your phone full in less than 20 minutes. On the imaging front, the X11T Pro is packing a 108-megapixel primary camera that can shoot 8K Video with Samsung’s HD10+ (and AI cinema modes). Watching those magnum opuses should be pretty enjoyable, too, since the phone’s display has a 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

At the same time, the company unveiled the Pad 5, an 11-inch tablet with a WQHD+ screen and support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. More importantly, however, Xiaomi’s ubiquitous Mi Smart Band 6 now has updates for NFC contactless payments. You’ll also be able to connect to Alexa for voice control, among other things.

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Disney+ is remaking the classic sci-fi movie 'Flight of the Navigator'

Directed by Bryce Dallas Howard.

Disney

Flight of the Navigator may not have been a global smash hit, but it certainly jibes with a certain age group right now. Now, several years after Disney first planned to do something with the film, the company has announced a reboot for Disney+ is in the works. Details are thin on the ground at such an early stage, but we do know that Bryce Dallas Howard (star of Jurassic World and regular Lucasfilm director) will helm the remake. If you’re looking for your fill of Disney content, Kris Nadus has done their regular deep-dive on this week’s episode of Marvel’s What If.

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Boston Dynamics' Spot robot has learned to replan its routes

The robot dog can navigate around obstacles without human intervention.

Boston Dynamics

Well, it’s official, the robot dog that will hunt us all down in the end-times has learned to navigate on its own. Boston Dynamics has announced a software update to its Spot robot means the machine can reroute itself when its regular planned path is blocked. The company says this will enable Spot to better run autonomous inspection tours, taking photos in hazardous or hard-to-reach areas. Yeah, sure, that’s the reason.

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The biggest news stories you might have missed

Marshall unveils its first true wireless earbuds with ANC

Fitbit smartwatches now detect snoring and other loud noises

TP-Link's latest WiFi 6 router includes a dedicated band for gaming

Razer's finger sleeve absorbs thumb sweat for mobile gaming

Unicode 14.0 adds 37 new emoji, including 'melting face' and 'beans'

Amazon’s customary early-September refresh of its home entertainment products comes with a big, if not that unexpected, surprise. As part of a whole fleet of new Fire TV devices, the mega-retailer has announced the first launch, at least in the US, of its own Amazon-branded TVs. First up, the Fire TV Omni series is a lineup of 4K screens in 43-, 50-, 55-, 65- and 75-inch sizes. The smaller trio in that lust support HDR10, hybrid log gamma HDR (HLG) and Dolby Digital Plus, as well as the usual Alexa integrations. The larger pair, the 65- and 75-inch models, also get Dolby Vision, as well as a thinner bezel to better fit into your room decor.

These new screens come with a whole bunch of Alexa integrations and links to the broader Amazon ecosystem. As we’ve seen on other Fire TV units, far-field microphones will let you speak to Alexa from across the room, and lets you control the rest of your smart home from the couch. As well as the usual recommendations and curation, the Omni will also let you access TikTok straight from your TV. You’ll also be able to speak to your visitors if you have a Ring doorbell, and if you plug in a webcam to your TV, you can use it for both Alexa calling and Zoom, when that feature is enabled later this year.

Price-wise, these TVs will start at $410 for the 43-inch model and fly all the way up to $1,100 for the 75-inch beefy boi. All of them will be exclusive to Amazon and Best Buy, although it’s worth noting that Amazon is knocking up to $110 off the 50-inch Omni as an introductory offer, making it cheaper than the 43-incher, when they arrive over the next month.

Amazon

Amazon is also looking after the lower-end with the “4-series” range of smart TVs, which offer HDR10 and HLG. The lineup includes 43-, 50- and 55-inch sizes, with the same Fire TV smarts and Alexa integrations you'll find on pretty much any comparable Fire TV device. Naturally, Amazon is targeting price with this series, and the 43-inch model will be priced at $370, while $470 and $520 will be enough to grab you the 50-and 55-inch units, respectively. Similarly, Amazon will offer discounts on select models here as well.

Of course, if the idea of handing Amazon even more of your cash fills you with dread, you can also get new Fire TV sets from other manufacturers. Pioneer, for instance, is launching a new 4K set in 43-and-50-inch sizes with HDR10 and Dolby Vision, as well as picture-in-picture with a compatible device. Toshiba, meanwhile, is launching a range of Fire TV sets with far-field voice, which has been a must-have for Fire TV devices for years at this point. These models, however, won't be available until the spring of 2022, but Amazon promises that you’ll get “high-end picture quality in large format sizes,” including a 55-, 65- and 75-inch model.

Amazon

If you’re already happy with your TV, however, then Amazon also has the new TV Stick 4K Max to plug into your existing set. The stick is packing a new processor, 2GB RAM and WiFi 6, which Amazon says will make it smoother, faster and bettererier than any other streaming stick on the market. You’ll also get a bunch of the same Alexa voice features and access to Amazon Luna, the company’s cloud gaming service. The hardware also supports 4K, HDR, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos, offers live view picture-in-picture and comes with the new Alexa voice remote. When available, it’ll cost you $55 for the privilege of owning one, too.

According to the National Park Service, washing machines are bad for our planet, so bad in fact that they can use up to 41 gallons of water per load. That’s not ideal given the prevalence of droughts as climate change intensifies its work to wipe humanity from the face of the planet. That’s why Bosch, the German multinational which makes, uh, pretty much everything, has created FreshUp. It’s a tool designed to “refresh” your clothes without the need to dump them into your washing machine.

The idea is to remove odors from clothes that are otherwise clean, in the sense that they’re not visibly stained. You know, an evening gown or tuxedo that looks a million dollars but smells like the bottom of a well-visited ashtray, or that t-shirt that goes perfectly with your outfit, but smells a little bit sweaty. In those situations, you’d grab this doodad, rub it over the required garment and step out smelling fresh as a daisy.

FreshUp is a lozenge-shaped device measuring 6.5-inches long, with a 2-inch treatment area on its underside. Once charged and turned on, you press this against your dry clothes so that the process of breaking down the smell can begin. It works as an ionizer, creating a plasma which Bosch says dissolves the connections between odor molecules.

There’s a beautiful design on the top that’s designed to resemble an interlacing series of magnetic field lines. This is backlit in white, and turns purple when it’s actually treating your clothes with its ionization. Despite the overall vibe that this is a product that fell out of a Sharper Image catalog twenty years ago, it’s impeccably designed. Thankfully, there are no “but wait, there’s more” innovations to add to the list of jobs this thing can do.

The battery takes around four hours to charge and will give you an hour of processing before it needs to go back on the wire. Bosch also chose a micro USB port for charging rather than USB-C, which is, you know, a choice you can make in 2021. But it’s not ideal if you’re trying to minimize cable clutter and are looking to ditch the older standard as soon as possible.

As soon as you’ve treated a garment with FreshUp, you’ll be acutely aware of the ionization in the air. It offers a similar smell to the taste you get in your mouth when you’ve bitten your tongue. That iron-in-the-blood scent that clings to your hand when you’ve held onto some loose change while waiting for a vending machine. And it doesn’t just sit on your clothes, but hangs in the air, where on very dry summer days you’ll want to make sure you leave your windows open to encourage airflow.

In its sales pitch, Bosch says that FreshUp was designed to eliminate what it describes as a “chair-drobe.” You know, that pile of clothes in your bedroom that maybe you drape over the back of a chair, or stuff on the bottom of your wardrobe, because they’re too clean to wash. I’m not a regular chair-drobe-ist, but the fan housing of my rowing machine is sturdy enough to drape clothes over on the rare occasions they wind up in this state. Bosch adds that, after treatment, “even tough odors such as cigarette smoke and body odor are removed, leaving clothes as if they have been hung outside to dry.”

Daniel Cooper

And here’s where I’ve really earned my wages over the last month or so, because I’ve spent a chunk of this summer sniffing awful things. Not to mention, of course, wearing already-worn clothes and spending way too long with my nose in my own armpit. I’ve been testing a high-intensity exercise bike and trying to be as active as possible, all the while getting my clothes covered in cigarette smoke and frying oil. Consider this a content warning for what is about to follow, as well as a polite request for danger pay.

There were plenty of smells that the FreshUp was able to dispel without breaking much of a sweat, including the cigarette smoke and fried food. It’s in this regard that makes me think that FreshUp is perfect for traveling, when you want to make sure that you’re looking and smelling your best. If your top smells like the inside of an ashtray, just waft this thing over it, hang it up for an hour or two, and boom, you’re away.

But no matter how much I rubbed this thing over the armpits of my well-worn t-shirts (after, I should make clear, the fabric had dried out) I could never banish the smell of my sweat. I tried everything, including leaving a t-shirt hanging up for a day or two and then treating it again, then leaving it to hang for another couple of hours, and nothing. The scent wasn’t eliminated, although I will say that it was moderated somewhat, but not enough to make you not deeply self-conscious about how you smell. But I did wonder if this was a “me” problem rather than Bosch’s, and so grabbed clothes from other family members. One of my relatives who went for a run handed me a pair of their socks which stank so bad that they probably violated chemical weapons laws.

And again, I’d like to reiterate that the time I spent dry-retching was all in the service of good journalism.

Once dried out, I treated those socks and found that, again, FreshUp hadn’t destroyed the smell, but it had reduced the urge to heave. That, broadly speaking, means that this is not going to be your savior if you’re schlepping around in a warm country.

But if you aren’t cursed with the blight of free-flowing underarms (or, in Richard Nixon’s case, upper lip) then I think FreshUp may have a place for you. I can think of some times where, after a long evening on assignment, I’d love to give my clothes an emergency refresh. If you’re doing two or three smart events back-to-back and can’t visit a dry cleaners, then FreshUp is probably a good shout, but the use cases are limited.

But don’t expect the results to be as good as washing, because fundamentally, nothing is going to be able to replace your washing machine just yet. And then there’s the price, which at £250 ($342) is a little high for a device that can’t revolutionize how you do laundry. At least, not yet.

Samsung has just thrown down a gauntlet and insisted that its newest imaging sensor may be the thing that knocks Sony off its perch. The Korean giant has today announced the ISOCELL HP1, which it says is the first 200-megapixel image sensor (with 0.64μm pixels) for mobile devices. It added that the silicon is already small enough to fit in mobile hardware and that the promise of all of those extra pixels is to retain fidelity when pictures are cropped or resized.

Of course, these eye-catching figures don’t really mean a huge amount given that the HP1 will use pixel-binning just like every other overpowered image sensor. But arguably, the biggest innovation here is ChameleonCell, which can adjust the extent of the binning depending on the environment. For instance, in very low light, the camera bins down (by 16) to a 12.5-megapixel sensor, but promises images that are far brighter and clearer compared to its rivals.

Samsung

When shooting video in clear light, meanwhile, the system will divide by four, offering a 50-megapixel lens capable of shooting 8K videos at 30 frames per second. All of this averaging, Samsung says, will produce pictures and video that hold “an astonishing amount of detail that helps the image stay sharp even when cropped or resized.”

Samples of the new silicon are available right now, and we would expect to see them popping up in mobile devices in the far-flung future. It's worth noting that Samsung's Exynos 2100 already supports image sensors up to 200-megapixels, so while we wouldn't want to speculate that we'll see this in a future Galaxy flagship, we're also not not saying that. 

A company purporting to improve access to local TV stations for people who can’t access the signal via traditional means has been dealt a blow by a New York Court. Locast has lost the courtroom skirmish started by CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox, which said that the company was violating their copyright. Deadline reports that the quartet’s request for summary judgment was granted, saying that it couldn’t use its non-profit status as a defense against further action.

The big four, of course, don’t believe Locast’s aims were anywhere near as public-minded as the company made out. The body was reportedly backed, in part, by AT&T and Dish Network, and the networks feel that the whole project was set up as a way of dodging carriage fees. Part of Locast’s defense was that US copyright law allows third parties to boost local signals, and that it acted like a signal booster station.

It’s worth noting that Locast’s founder David Goodfriend, a lawyer and former FCC legal advisor, conceived of Locast in the wake of Aero’s destruction at the hands of the big networks. A 2019 New York Times profile explained that he had designed the legal situation to be “compliant within the law.” The profile is even titled that the company would “love to get sued” to act as a test-case for the rules.

The court found that Locast’s policy of expanding into new markets runs contrary to the aim of a non-profit, where cash should be used to cover running costs only. Judge Louis Stanton said that the cash raised from Locast’s $5-per-month (don’t call it a) subscription was being used to bankroll further expansion and earned “far more money from user charges than was necessary.”

It didn’t help, that when some TV providers have entered into carriage disputes, Locast has been cited as a way of still accessing that content. As The Wall Street Journal wrote back in 2019, DirecTV and Dish customers were directed to access Locast, although Dish and AT&T both said that this was only because it felt that it was obliged to offer the choice to its users.

By removing Locast’s major legal shield, it’s certainly likely that the project will soon have yet more lawyers on their door. After all, were it to survive, it would be a challenge both to the profitability of the major TV players and encouragement to any future upstarts looking to disrupt the space.

In a statement, Locast said that the ruling was “disappointing,” citing commentary from the EFF adding that the “court interpreted the law in an artificially-narrow way.” The EFF added that “over three million people use Locast to access local TV, including many who can’t afford cable and can’t pick up their local stations with an antenna. This ruling threatens their access to local news and vital information during a global pandemic.” It closed by saying that the ruling “treats copyright law not as an engine of progress but a moat protecting the most privileged position of the four giant broadcasting networks.”

In a blow to both Apple and Google, South Korea has today passed a law requiring major app stores to allow alternative payment methods. The Wall Street Journal reports that the bill, due to be rubber-stamped by president Moon Jae-in, forces platform holders to open up their stores. In addition, the new rules will prevent unreasonable delays for app approvals, which has been described as a way to prevent retaliation against developers. Companies which fail to comply with the ruling are at risk of being fined up to three percent of their domestic revenue.

The bill could have global ramifications given the battles that Google and Apple have fought concerning their app platform dominance. Both companies have come under fire for how they run the App and Play stores, respectively, with regulators and developers scrutinizing their business practices. In July, 36 US states launched an antitrust suit against Google over concerns that it is violating antitrust law, while Apple has been engaged in well-documented skirmishes with both Epic Games and Spotify. Officials in both the US and Europe, both of which are wrestling with concerns over the future of digital payments, are likely to look at both South Korea’s law, and how both companies respond to it. 

China has announced a further crackdown on the amount of time children can play online video games, with the new limit set to just three hours per week. Bloomberg, reporting from local news sources, says that platforms like Tencent can now offer gaming to kids between the hours of 8-9pm on Friday, weekends and public holidays.

It’s a significant and notable reduction from the previous rule, which had been generally capped at 1.5 hours per day in 2019. Earlier this month, Tencent was forced to cut the amount of time minors could play the smash hit mobile title Honor of Kings to just an hour on weeknights and two hours on the weekend. The added restriction is likely to impact the share price of companies in this space, which has seen recent instability.

Historically, China has always had an aversion to video games, albeit with more nuance than most people believe. The country has, however, amplified anti-game rhetoric in recent years, and on August 3rd, a key state-owned news outlet described video games as “spiritual opium.” The piece, as reported by The New York Times, went on to outline all of the ways in which gaming could harm Chinese kids.

As well as the time limit for online gaming (and we’ve asked our colleagues to clarify if any of this can also apply to offline and console gaming), authorities want all titles hooked up to some form of anti-addiction system. Other new rules include companies keeping (real) name data for all users, more reporting on the use of in-game transactions, and more regulatory scrutiny more generally.

It’s not clear how much of an impact this will have in the real-world since Tencent says minors make up a very small part of its overall business. But given the country’s continuedassault on various parts of the tech industry, it’s likely that there will be more hoops for businesses to jump through in future. A week ago, meanwhile, South Korea declared that it would ditch its infamous "Cinderella Law," banning video gamers from playing between midnight and 6am, saying that it is respecting children's rights.