Starting today, some Facebook users in the US will see Reels, Instagram’s take on TikTok-like short-form videos, appear throughout the company's main app, the social media giant told The Verge. If Facebook enrolls you in the test, you’ll see the clips appear nestled in the News Feed and within Groups. The experiment is an expansion to an existing one Facebook is running in Canada, India and Mexico.

In addition to watching Reels on the platform, you can record them directly from the Facebook app. Moreover, much like with Stories, Instagram users can cross-post the clips to Facebook. The company told The Verge the test is in part a response to the popularity of the format, with interest in the clips growing "especially quickly."

Whatever you think of them, it’s safe to say short-form videos are here to stay, and Facebook isn’t the only company intent on integrating the format into its mainline app. Just last month, YouTube rolled out tools for creating Shorts to users in 100 countries and started paying out creators from the $100 million fund it created to support the format.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed new antitrust charges against Facebook. The amended complaint comes after a federal judge threw out the agency's initial suit back in June. In dismissing the case, Judge James Boasberg said the FTC had failed to provide enough evidence Facebook had a monopoly in the social media market. Boasberg gave the FTC 30 days to amend its case, later extending that deadline to August 19th.   

The new complaint is approximately two dozen pages longer than the original but put forwards many of the same core arguments. Specifically, the FTC alleges Facebook used the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp in 2012 and 2014 to secure its position in the market. The agency says the amended complaint includes additional data and evidence to support its claims that Facebook is a monopolist.  

"Facebook has maintained its monopoly position in significant part by pursuing Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy, expressed in 2008: 'it is better to buy than compete,'" the FTC says in the document. "True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats."

In July, the company, following the lead of Amazon, petitioned the FTC to recuse Commissioner Lina Khan from discussions on whether or not the regulator should push forward with another antitrust case against the company. In a press release, the FTC said the agency's "Office of General Counsel carefully reviewed Facebook’s petition to recuse Chair Lina M. Khan. As the case will be prosecuted before a federal judge, the appropriate constitutional due process protections will be provided to the company. The Office of the Secretary has dismissed the petition."

On Twitter, Facebook said it would have more to say about the amended complaint soon. The company has until October 4th to respond to the suit.  

Netflix has started the process of supporting spatial audio on its iOS app, according to 9to5Mac. Following Reddit reports, a spokesperson for the company told the outlet it recently began a slow rollout of the feature to its iOS users. To take advantage, you’ll need a pair of AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, as well as an iPhone or iPad with iOS 14 installed on the device. The toggle to enable the feature is located in the Control Center. As this is a slow rollout, you may not see the toggle even if you have the latest version of Netflix installed on your iPhone or iPad.

Spatial audio uses head-tracking to widen the soundstage of a movie or TV show and make it feel like the entire room you’re in is being filled with sound. The result is a more immersive experience. Netflix is a bit late to support spatial audio. Some of the more popular apps where you could use the feature before today include Disney+, HBO Max and Peacock. Still, there are just as many platforms where it’s not available. More notable examples include YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, making this a significant milestone for the feature all the same.

Twitter is working to make Spaces more discoverable. On Wednesday, the company announced an update to its API v2 that will allow developers to search for live and scheduled Spaces using criteria like user IDs and keywords. “With the Spaces lookup and Spaces search endpoints, we hope to enable developers to build tools and solutions that help people on (and off) Twitter find interesting and relevant Spaces more easily,” the company said in a blog post.

As The Verge points out, it sounds like the new API functionality won’t allow third-party apps to let you host and listen to Spaces outside of the main app, but what will do is help make the audio rooms easier to find. After opening up the app to more of its users in May, Twitter has been quick to iterate on the app, adding features like support for co-hosting and voice manipulation. Clearly the company sees Spaces as an important part of its future.

Researchers from Italy have created a robot that could one day allow diabetes patients to get a dose of insulin without any needles. PILLSID involves two separate parts. One component is an internal insulin dispenser that a doctor would surgically implant in your abdomen. The other is a magnetic capsule loaded with the hormone.

Anytime you need to refill the dispenser, you take one of the pills, and it travels down your digestive system until it reaches the point where the device is implanted near your small intestine. Using the power of magnets, the device rotates the capsule into position and then punctures it with a retractable needle and pumps the refill of insulin into a reservoir. The cool thing here is that the dispenser charges wirelessly, limiting the number of interventions a doctor needs to maintain the device. Once the capsule is empty, it continues its trip down your digestive system until you eventually poop it out. Good times.

On the surface, the system may sound scary, but in a lot of ways, it’s preferable to many of the current tools you can use as a type 1 diabetes patient to regulate your blood sugar levels. Insulin pumps, for instance, involve a tube or needle that you need to self-administer. One jab might not be so bad, but some people need to get multiple injections per day. "Maybe it's scary to think about a docking station inside the body, but it worked," Arianna Menciassi, one of the co-authors of the study, told IEEE Spectrum. Unintuitively, this is a much less intrusive system, and it has the potential to be useful for administering other life-saving drugs.

In a test involving three diabetic pigs, the research team found the system could successfully manage their insulin levels for several hours. In some instances, they found bodily fluids from the pigs would leak into the robot. So as a next step, the team is working on sealing the device better.

While it will likely be some time before PILLSID makes its way to hospitals, devices that attend to your medical needs from inside your body are likely to become more and more common. In 2016, for instance, MIT showed off an origami robot that can pick up objects from inside your intestine.

Throughout this week, Roku is adding 17 new content sources to the Roku Channel. With the expansion, you can now access TV shows and movies from more than 200 different sources. Some of the more notable additions include IGN, CBC News and AccuWeather, as well as a linear channel devoted exclusively to the Tribeca Film Festival.

At launch, the latter includes 114 movies from the festival’s back catalog, with new films to come every 30 days. The channel will also feature original content from Tribeca Studios. While it won’t replace the in-person event, its addition is timely given how hard it’s been to make it out to a movie theater in the last year and a half.

“The demand for free, quality programming continues to be of importance to our streamers,” said Ashley Hovey, director of the Roku Channel. “We’ve seen linear streaming explode over the last year, and we’re very excited to offer an all-new lineup of great channels with some of the most-recognized franchises to our users.”

If you need a refresher, the Roku Channel is a free way to watch ad-supported video content on your Roku device or TV. Last September, the company released standalone Android and iOS apps, making the platform even more accessible.

Epic Games has released a new limited-time mode in Fortnite called Imposters, allowing players to scratch their Among Us itch without leaving the battle royale. Each match features two teams made up of eight agents and two imposters.

The action takes place in a new interior map called The Bridge. The agents need to complete various tasks to get to the end of the match safely. Naturally, the imposters are there to throw a wrench in that plan. When a dead body is found, everyone who’s still alive convenes to voice their suspicions and vote who they believe committed the crime. In a twist to the proceedings, public voice chat is disabled, and you’ll need to use a quick chat menu and emotes to communicate with anyone who isn’t in your party.

As an imposter, you have a handful of tricks up your sleeve to throw the opposing team off your tracks. You can make both agents and imposters temporarily look like Fortnite’s banana mascot Peely, as well as teleport everyone to a different location on the map. Like in Among Us, you also have the power to freeze the progress of any assignments the other players are working on in and around The Bridge.

For Epic Games, this is its second take on Among Us. At the end of last year, it released The Spy Within, another limited-time mode that saw players divided into teams of eight agents and, in that case, two infiltrators. You can queue to play Imposters once you download the latest Fortnite update. 

Google has started a new promotion to entice YouTube Premium users to check out its Stadia Pro subscription. Provided you’re new to the paid service, you can now get a three-month trial to see if cloud gaming is your thing.

First spotted by 9to5Google, the promotion is only available to current YouTube Premium subscribers in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. You can claim the three-month trial until January 31st, 2022, at which point you have until February 14th to redeem the offer. According to the fine print on Google’s website, the promotion is also available to those who currently have a trial to YouTube Premium.

As a Stadia Pro subscriber, you get access to several free titles every month. You can also purchase select games and downloadable content at a discount. But the reason most people get Stadia Pro is to stream the platform’s catalog of games at a 4K resolution with HDR and 5.1 surround sound.

Apple has renewed Carpool Karaoke for a fifth season and plans to move the series over to its TV+ service, according to Deadline. The show predates the streaming platform by several years and has been available through Apple Music and the TV app since the company first premiered the project back in 2017.

Both the series and The Late Late Showwith James Corden skit it’s based on have been on hiatus since the start of the pandemic. Once season five gets underway, you’ll find the previous four seasons on Apple TV+ as well. The change should make it easier to find the series since it will live alongside the company’s other original programming.

Snap is introducing a new tool called Snapchat Trends that provides a public overview of the most popular keywords currently in use on the app. Accessible via the company’s website, you can use the feature to get a sense of the topics that Snapchat users are referencing in Stories they share with the public and their friends. The tool also includes a database you can use to search for specific terms.

While the feature will primarily be of interest to marketers and advertisers looking to tap into Snapchat’s growing user base of 293 million daily active accounts, it’s something anyone can access, and looking at the trends you get an insight into what young people care and worry about. Yes, you see topics related to shows like The Bachelorette, but things like the Taliban takeover of Kabul and the lockdown in Australia are also featured. It's a reminder that there's always more to youth culture than it seems.