If you’re an Apple user with a 2020 Toshiba or Insignia 4K UHD Smart Fire TV, you’ll want to look out for the latest software update for your television set as it adds support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. AirPlay 2 allows you to stream audio and video content from your iPhone, iPad or Mac to a compatible device. It’s also possible to mirror the screen on your iOS device. With HomeKit, meanwhile, you can control your TV using Siri or the Home app on iOS and macOS. Using voice commands, it’s possible to turn the TV on and off, as well as adjust the volume and control playback.

To take advantage of that latter functionality, you’ll need to dig into the settings menu on your TV, navigate to the “Display and Sounds” section and select “AirPlay and HomeKit.” From there, follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup process. If all you want to do is use AirPlay, you don’t have to do anything special; the feature is enabled by default after installing the new software.

Ten years after its initial release, Teenage Engineering still finds ways to surprise and delight with the OP-1. On Wednesday, the company released a software update for the much-loved synth that adds support for USB audio streaming. In short, that means it much easier to connect the OP-1 to your favorite digital audio workstation and start making music; there’s no need anymore to first connect it to an external sound card. Similarly, if you want to sample and record to the OP-1, that’s easier too.

According to Teenage Engineering, USB audio streaming works with both PCs and Macs, as well as iOS and Android devices. So many years after release, the company says it was able to bring such a transformational feature to the OP-1 by adapting what it learned while working on the OP-Z. You can download the update by visiting the Teenage Engineering website and following the instructions listed there.

In 2015, John Romero shared a video showing off a demo id Software developed in 1990 to sell Nintendo on the idea of a PC port of Super Mario Bros. 3. Nintendo went on to reject the studio’s pitch, but the code John Carmack developed to allow the game to smoothly scroll on PC went on to play an important role in id’s subsequent Commander Keen games. That piece of gaming history has now made its way to the Strong National Museum of Play.

The museum told Ars Technica it recently obtained the demo as part of a larger donation. It came on a floppy disk from a developer who wasn’t associated with the original project. Curator Andrew Borman says he imaged the disk to preserve it as a physical artifact and used DOSBox and Romero’s video to verify what the museum had on its hands. "For being such an early demo, it is a lot of fun to play, especially 1-1, which recreates that iconic first level from Super Mario Bros 3," he told Ars Technica.

Currently, the Museum of Play doesn’t plan to exhibit the demo to the public, though Borman noted there would be “plenty of opportunities to come in the future." In the meantime, researchers can request to study the rare piece of gaming history.

Twitter is getting better at moderating its platform. That’s one of the main takeaways from the company’s most recent transparency report, which it shared on Wednesday. Between July 1st and December 31st, 2020, Twitter says it took action against 964,459 accounts for abusive behavior. Compared to the first six months of 2020, that’s a 142 percent increase. Over the same timeframe, Twitter also removed more hateful content. On that front, the company says it took action against 1,126,990 accounts, a 77 percent increase from the 635,415 accounts it reprimanded in the first half of 2020.

What’s notable here is that the company attributes the latter increase to policy changes it put in place throughout 2020. Specifically, it calls out the fact that it began taking action on "content that incites fear and/or fearful stereotypes about protected categories" as a result of an uptick in harassment during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The company also calls out an expansion of its hateful conduct policy in early December that saw the company prohibit language that “dehumanizes” people based on their race, ethnicity or national origin. Not mentioned in the report — but likely still something that had a positive effect — is the ban the company put in place in July against links to content that promotes violence and hateful conduct.

In another part of the report, Twitter also attributes its recent success to better technology. As of the second half of last year, the company claims its automated moderation tools helped it take action against 65 percent of abusive tweets and other behavior before someone had to flag the content for its moderators. To put that percentage in perspective, those tools were about 50 percent effective by late 2019.

Obviously, Twitter has yet to completely stop abuse, harassment and hate speech from taking place on its platform, but today’s report shows the company is at least making progress on its 2019 promise to “increase the health of public conversation.” 

LG is done skirting around the price of its rollable OLED R TV. As noted by The Verge, the company’s US website now says you can buy the set for $100,000. Previously, not only did LG not list the price of the OLED R in the US, you had to call a sales representative to buy one. Now all that’s in between you and the company's futuristic TV is an “Add to Cart” button and about the cost of a down payment on a house in the Bay Area.

For that amount of money, you get a 65-inch 4K TV that can take on different viewing positions. In its signature “Line View” mode, only part of the OLED R is visible to display the time, weather and other bits of information. It’s also possible to lower the display to do away with letterboxing when watching a movie. Other features include support for Dolby Vision, AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. And while the panel doesn’t get as bright as LG’s latest G1 sets, it can still output gaming content at 4K and 120Hz.

If you’re looking for a more affordable entry into LG’s OLED TV ecosystem, the company’s 2021 lineup starts at a much more approachable $1,299. Even its mid-tier C1 family won’t set you back as much as the OLED R, with the most expensive variant in that lineup coming in at $5,999. But then who are we to tell you how to spend your money? 

In April, Google made HTTPS the default in Chrome, but that doesn’t mean the company’s long-standing push to make the protocol as widely used as possible is over. On Wednesday, Google detailed new features it will introduce in Chrome to further push HTTPS adoption.

With Chrome 94, Google will introduce a feature called HTTPS-First Mode. Much like its Firefox counterpart, the tool will attempt to ensure you always connect to a website over HTTPS. When that’s not possible, Chrome will display a warning that you’re putting your privacy and security at risk. At first, users will need to turn on the feature, though Google says it may make it the default for everyone down the road.

Ahead of Chrome 94, the company has a separate HTTPS-related experiment planned. Starting with Chrome 93, Google will replace the lock icon in the address bar, which indicates you’re securely connected to a website, with a more “neutral” downward arrow.

The company says it’s doing this to see if to “improve the discoverability of critical privacy and security information.” According to Google, only 11 percent of participants in a recent study knew what the icon meant. Most people assumed it was Chrome’s way of saying the website they were visiting was trustworthy, which is a potentially risky leap to make. The experiment won’t change the icon you’ll see when you connect to a website over HTTP. It will continue to say “Not Secure” in the address bar.

Despite all that it’s doing to make HTTPS as ubiquitous as possible, Google says it will continue to support HTTP for the time being. At the same time, the company notes it will explore whether it should limit or completely restrict certain Chrome features when you don’t have a secure connection to a website.

Since 2017, all of Apple's retail stores have offered Today At Apple sessions, free workshops where you can learn, among other things, how to get the most out of the company's devices and software. In 2020, necessitated by the pandemic, Apple started offering those tutorials online, hosting the sessions over Cisco Webex. Starting today, the company is making Today at Apple tutorials available on YouTube.

Apple

The first one will teach you how to draw yourself as a Peanuts character in Pages. Krista Porter, a storyboard artist on The Snoopy Show, leads the nearly 10-minute long tutorial alongside Anthony, a creative pro at Apple's Carnegie Library location in Washington DC. Showrunner Mark Evestaff also makes an appearance in the video to talk about the Apple TV+ exclusive. We'll have to see how later episodes shape up, but at least in its current YouTube form, Today at Apple is as much a workshop series as it is a product advertisement.

That's not surprising. Today at Apple has had that slant for a while, but it's only one facet of the program as a whole. The move to YouTube also means the sessions don't function as a workshop where you can ask the instructor to clarify a point. So it's best to think of the program's YouTube availability as a way for the company to show people who might know about Today at Apple that it exists. Apple says it will upload more Today at Apple sessions to YouTube in the future.

Mastercard and Verizon (Engadget’s parent company) say they plan to work together on “transformational” financial technologies. The companies told CNBC they hope their new partnership starts producing results by 2023. One of the main areas they plan to work on is contactless payments. Specifically, they want to push Mastercard’s Tap on Phone platform, which allows compatible mobile devices to double as point of sale terminals that can process NFC payments. Among other things the two plan to explore are technologies that will make it easier for businesses to add touchless payment systems to their stores.

Naturally, 5G will play a significant role in all the solutions Verizon and Mastercard have in mind. “5G will enable the small and medium business to handle transactions more quickly and focus on what they are really delivering to customers,” Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg told CNBC. Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach went on to tell the outlet the company expects small- and medium-sized businesses will represent the biggest area of growth for 5G contactless payments.

As for Verizon’s stake in all this, the company has a lot riding on the success of its 5G rollout. It spent $45.4 billion, more than AT&T and T-Mobile combined, in the recent Federal Communications Commission’s C-band auction to secure as mid-band spectrum as possible. Incidentally, 2023 is when the carrier expects its 5G network to provide coverage to 175 million people across the US.

As protests continue in Cuba over the country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the surrounding economic fallout, the Cuban government has moved to restrict access to social media and messaging platforms. According to NetBlocks, an organization that tracks internet access, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram have all been at least partially blocked on the Caribbean island since Monday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it appears the restrictions are still in place, with Reuters reporting that people in Havana don’t have access to mobile data at the moment. We’ve reached out to Facebook and Telegram for confirmation on the outages, and we’ll update this article when we hear back from the companies.

Mobile internet access is relatively new to Cuba. It was only in late 2018 that the country’s socialist government started rolling service out across the island. At the time, President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the politician protestors are demanding resign, said greater internet access would help Cubans “defend their revolution.” However, Cuba to dissent is not new. We’ve seen governments in countries like Mynamar and Iran use similar strategies when they faced protests in the past.

If you’ve done any online shopping in the last little while, there’s a good chance you’ve run into services like Affirm and PayPal’s Pay in 4. They allow you to purchase something and pay for it later by splitting up the total cost of the item into several installments. By the looks of things, Apple could soon offer a similar option to Apple Pay users. According to Bloomberg, the company is working with Goldman Sachs on a service called “Apple Pay Later” that will allow those with its devices to settle purchases over time, including ones they make at physical shops.

When using the service, the outlet says you’ll have two ways of paying for your purchase. If you pick the “Apple Pay in 4” option, you’ll need to make four interest-free payments across two months. The other option is to extend the payment period over multiple months, though in that case interest comes into play. Bloomberg says it wasn’t able to determine how much interest Apple plans to charge or when the company will roll out the service. 

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the report, and we’ll update this article when we hear back from the company. But in many ways, Apple Pay Later sounds like a logical extension of what the company is already doing with Apple Card, where one of the perks it offers is installment plans for Mac and iPad purchases.