Tesla's latest large-scale recall effectively covers its entire output for one nation. China's market regulator has ordered a recall of over 1.1 million Tesla cars, or nearly all the vehicles it has sold in the country, over a reported flaw in the regenerative braking system. As drivers can't set the intensity of regenerative braking or receive alerts with a sustained press of the accelerator, officials believe there's a risk owners might misuse the pedals (as they can't hear a revving engine) and crash.

The EV maker will fix the issue through a software update that both tweaks the default regenerative braking level and lets users customize the system's strength. Tesla will also notify drivers who press the accelerator for a long time. The recall covers Model 3 and Model Y cars made in China between January 2019 and April this year, as well as some imported Model 3, Model S and Model X examples.

Tesla has disbanded its PR team and hasn't commented on the recall. Bloombergpoints out that Chinese drivers have complained multiple times about acceleration and braking issues. One driver used the 2021 Shanghai auto show to highlight a serious crash where her father nearly died after the brakes failed. Tesla apologized, but didn't acknowledge a glitch and noted the high speed before the collision.

As with most Tesla recalls, the software update won't significantly disrupt the company's business in the short term. However, it's not a good look for a brand that has had numerous recalls in recent years, including 80,000 in China last fall for software and seat belt problems. Tesla depends heavily on China for revenue — it's home to the giant Gigafactory Shanghai, which currently produces more than half of the firm's cars each year. Tesla can't afford to alienate either customers or officials.

On Thursday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he had appointed someone to take over from him as CEO, and it didn't take long for that person's identity to be confirmed. Less than a day later, Musk confirmed that NBCUniversal's head of ad sales Linda Yaccarino is taking on the job. Yaccarino is expected to start her new role in around six weeks.

Yaccarino "will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design and new technology," Musk wrote. "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app."

Shortly after Musk said he is giving up the CEO gig to become Twitter's chief technical officer and executive chair, reports suggested that Yaccarino was in talks for the position. On Friday, NBCU confirmed that Yaccarino was leaving the company. That's not exactly ideal timing for NBCU given that the company is set to show off its upcoming programming slate to advertisers early next week. 

Under Yaccarino's watch, NBCU has continued its close ties with Twitter. The two sides recently expanded their partnership for the 2024 Olympic Games, which will see Twitter host video from the event. Yaccarino tweeted at Musk around the time news emerged of the companies' renewed partnership. "“Hey, @elonmusk, here’s an idea for our new partnership: Periscope for Paris 2024. Let’s just go hi-res first," Yaccarino wrote.

Yaccarino could help Twitter to smooth over its fractured relationships with some advertisers. In the months after Musk assumed control of Twitter, reports suggested that many of the company's top advertisers had temporarily stopped spending ad dollars on the platform. Some were said to have expressed concern about their ads appearing next to hate speech and misinformation under Musk's looser approach to content moderation.

Musk bought Twitter in October and his tenure has been chaotic, to say the least. From swiftly firing the former leadership team and laying off thousands of workers to moving forward with a plan to purge inactive accounts (including those of the deceased), it seems like barely a day has gone by over the last seven months without something happening around Elon Musk and Twitter.

Back in December, Musk posted a poll on Twitter, asking users if he should remain as CEO or bring someone else in. More than 17.5 million votes later, the majority (57.5 percent) voted in favor of Musk stepping down. Musk promised to do just that and focus on the technical side of Twitter's operations as soon as he could find someone to take over. Five months later, it seems he has stuck by his word.

Shortly after Musk said he is stepping away from Twitter's top job, Tesla's share price jumped up. With Tesla falling behind on its goal of delivering 1.8 million vehicles this year despite a litany of price cuts, and the Cybertruck perhaps being pushed back again due to a battery production delay, Musk may need to pay closer attention to that company. Stockholders appear to be pleased that he may be able to devote more time to Tesla — but rumors suggest he might be moving on from the CEO position at that company too.

The biggest news in tech this week came from Google's annual developer conference on Wednesday. They announced three new devices: The Pixel 7a smartphone, the Pixel Tablet and the Pixel Fold. Discounts on brand new products don't happen often, but both Amazon and Google were quick to bundle Pixel 7a orders with a $50 Amazon gift card, or a free pair of Pixel Buds, respectively — not sales per se, but free stuff is still compelling for anyone already planning on getting a new phone. Of course, there were deals unrelated to Google too, like savings on Amazon devices including the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Echo speakers, and nearly all Kindle models. There's also a sale on Anker charging devices and Apple AirPods Pro. Here are the best tech deals from this week that you can still get today. 

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max

As part of a larger sale on Fire streaming devices, Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K Max is on sale for $35, which is a 36 percent discount and matches the lowest price the streaming device has gone for, including during Black Friday sales. If the screen you plan to use with the stick isn't 4K, you probably don't need this model. The Fire TV Stick Lite is also on sale, going for just $20 after a 33 percent discount. Our commerce writer, Nicole Lee, named it the best budget streaming device in our guide. It grants access to the latest Fire TV interface and includes an Alexa voice remote so you can find content and change channels just by asking. Keep in mind that the Fire TV Stick Lite isn't able to control your TV's power or volume, so you'll need to use two remotes.

Google Pixel 7a

Google officially announced the Pixel 7a towards the end of its I/O event on Wednesday. Within minutes, both Google's storefront and Amazon had the new smartphone for sale. Now both are sweetening the deal with add-ons. Amazon is bundling the phone with a free $50 gift card and Google is throwing in a phone case and a pair of Pixel Buds A-Series (which have an MSRP of $99).

The $499 mobile is a budget alternative to the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, coming in $100 cheaper than the base model Pixel 7. It features the same Tensor G2 chip as its pricier siblings and actually has higher-res cameras and a slightly bigger battery. Our senior writer, Sam Rutherford, already published his review, and says, "it's got everything you need and more." The Amazon deal has one caveat: that bright coral color option you see in Sam's review isn't available on Amazon because it's a Google Store exclusive.

Anker 735 charger

Anker has earned numerous accolades from us in our charging and battery guides, so it's nice to see the brand putting on a wide sale like this one. The Anker 735 Charger is $38.41, which is a 31 percent discount and only a dollar more than its lowest price ever. It will deliver up to 65W of power as it charges up your devices, which should be enough for fast-charging smartphones and tablets. A slightly newer version of the charging brick, confusingly also called the 735 Charger, won a top spot in our fast-charger guide. It's down to $48 after a 20 percent coupon. Just be sure to click the coupon box as you add the charger to your cart. 

If it's time to replace the cable you use for your iPhone, you may want to consider the six-foot PowerLine II UBC-C to Lightning cord, which is just $9 after a 31 percent discount. 

Apple AirPods Pro

The second-gen AirPods Pro are back on sale for $200, which is a record low. There really is no better pair of wireless earbuds out there right now for iPhone users. The AirPods Pro pair quickly with iPhones and switch between it and other Apple devices quickly. We also appreciate the hands-free Siri access it offers, so you can get questions answered, respond to texts and more just by using voice commands. The latest model offers excellent sound quality and active noise cancellation, plus much-improved Transparency Mode.

Apple AirTags

A four-pack of AirTags is down to $89 again at Amazon, which is close to the lowest price we've seen. These Bluetooth trackers let you keep track of items like your keys and wallet from within Apple's Find My app. And the latest iPhone can even lead you directly to your lost things, provided you're still within Bluetooth range. Just make sure to pick up a case or a holder for your AirTags when you buy, since they do not have built-in holes for keyrings.

Beats Fit Pro

Sometimes the best colors aren't included in a promotion, but this time, even the flashy colors of the Beats Fit Pro are 20 percent off (unfortunately, the earth-toned Kardashian shades are only 10 percent off). That makes the Coral Pink, Tidal Blue and Volt Yellow shades just $160, which is the lowest price we've seen yet. 

We named the Beats Fit Pro our favorite earbuds for working out and gave them an 87 in our review thanks to their secure and comfortable fit. They've got enough bass to get your exercise playlists pumping and the six-hour battery life will get you through a workout and well beyond. It's worth noting that they don't support wireless charging and they tend to work better with iPhones than Android phones, possibly because Apple owns the Beats brand. 

MOOD MK1

The MOOD MK1 effects pedal from Chase Bliss is down to $245 at Reverb and directly from Chase Bliss, which is a 30 percent discount off the usual $350 price tag. Our managing editor Terrence O'Brien wrote about a different pedal from the brand last year and was impressed by the hardware. The MOOD MK1 is similarly well-regarded and one of the more popular pedals out there. It was discontinued and replaced by the MK2 this year, which is why the deal only lasts as long as units remain, but it still a worthy music-making companion — particularly at this price. 

Samsung T7 Shield SSD

Samsung 1TB T7 Shield SSD is on sale for just $75 at Amazon, which handily beats the original $160 list price. Of course, as is the way with storage devices, the price has been steadily dropping since it was released last year, but it's still a great way to expand the capacity of your devices. This is a more rugged version of the SSD we named the best portable option in our guide. The discount is part of a larger Samsung storage sale that also includes the internal 980 Pro SSD 2TB drive, which is $20 off and down to $140 and the 256GB EVO Select microSD memory card which is perfect for tablets and handheld gaming devices with a memory card slot. It's on sale for $18, which is 55 percent off the list price. 

Eargo 7

As part of a Mother's Day sale, the Eargo 7 is $300 off right now at the brand's website. an over-the-counter hearing aid made by a brand that acts more like a tech company than a stodgy medical device organization. Our editor-at-large James Trew tested them out, and found them to be pretty comfortable after an hour or so of wear and appreciated the battery life that was enough to get through a full day of use. They don't over emphasize sharp sounds or emit feedback like other hearing aids, and they adequately amplify sound. In the end he said, the Eargo 7s prove that "OTC hearing aids don’t have to mean scrimping on features and performance."

Roborock Q5 Robot Vacuum Cleaner

A bunch of Roborock robot vacuums are on sale at Amazon right now, so you can pick one up for as low as $280. One of our favorite robo-vacs, the Roborock S7+, has a $270 clippable coupon that will bring the final price down to a record low of $680. While its mobile app left much to be desired, the S7+ is a solid dirt-sucker with handy zone-targeting and cleaning schedule features. It also has extra perks like a child lock and a "pin and go" option, which lets you send the machine to a specific location in your home for more precise cleaning.

Apple HomePod (2nd gen)

Apple's latest HomePod is $20 off and down to a record low of $279. While not a huge discount, it is the first we've seen on this model that came out earlier this year. Apple fixed one of our biggest complaints about the original HomePod here — lackluster Siri capabilities. The new model can now recognize multiple users, play music from voice commands from a number of difference services, create recurring smart home automations and more. That, combined with the HomePod's excellent audio quality, clean design and lower price led us to give it a score of 84 in our review.

Apple Pencil (2nd gen)

The second-gen Apple Pencil is back on sale for an all-time low of $89. If you have a higher-end iPad, it will come as no surprise that this is the stylus you should get to use with it. It's one of the best iPad accessories you can buy, and it will be useful for artists, note-takers and even those who just want a bit more precision when interacting with their tablet. It has little to no latency, and it magnetically attaches to the side of your iPad so you can keep it handy all the time.

Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition

Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite Signature is down to $145, which is close to a record-low price. It's likely overkill for most people, but the Signature has a lot of perks that avid readers of ebooks will appreciate including a larger, more responsive screen, automatic brightness and warm light adjustments and wireless charging. We also appreciate its USB-C charging port and slim bezels. You can also save money on other Kindle models right now, too, including our favorite budget ereader, the 2022 Kindle, and the Kindle Kids version.

Google Pixel Buds Pro

You can still get Google's Pixel Buds Pro for only $145 at Wellbots when you use the code 55ENGAD at checkout. Google's answer to Apple's AirPods Pro earned a spot on our list of best wireless earbuds thanks to their solid sound quality, comfortable design, reliable touch controls and wireless charging. The buds also have a number of Android-specific features, including fine-tuned Google Assistant perks and automatic switching between Android devices.

Amazon Echo Show 8

The Echo Show 8 is down to $75 right now, which is only $5 more than it was during the holiday shopping season last year. This is one of our favorite smart displays, and it will be best for those who already use Amazon's Alexa or prefer that virtual assistant over others. Its 8-inch size is just right for most rooms of the home, and it will be better for watching TV shows and video chatting than other, smaller smart displays. We also appreciate that it has an upgraded camera with a physical shutter that you can use when you need more privacy.

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II

The Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II are down to $249 right now, which is close to their record-low price. These buds earned a spot on our list of best wireless earbuds for many reasons, but the standout is their noise cancellation performance. They are, by far, the best earbuds you can get today if you want to block out the world. They also have a comfortable design and great ambient sound as well. The discount on these buds is part of a larger sale on Bose headphones at Amazon, which also includes the QuietComfort 45 headphones for $279.

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“It all came about at 11:30PM on a random Wednesday.”

Penelope Bourbon CEO and founder Michael Paladini admitted that late-night calls are a regular occurrence for him. After his wife goes to bed, the kids are asleep and there are no emails hitting his inbox, he has time to get creative. One of these evening brainstorming sessions was with Robert Crandell, a regional sales manager for Tonnellerie Radoux and Pronektar. Radoux is a French cooperage that has been making barrels for decades. The company has been operating in the US since 1994, based in wine country California. What’s more, Radoux has conducted extensive research into the chemical composition and tannins of French oak.

Since 2008, Radoux has completed over 300 trials containing over 10 million analyses to observe polyphenols in the wood that can impact the appearance, taste and smell of wine. The result is a tool that can instantly measure these properties with Near Infrared Spectrometry, rather than using the time-consuming process of taking random samples from various batches of staves. The technology is called OakScan.

Tonnellerie Radoux

“French oak can be wildly inconsistent,” Crandell noted.

All of the variation in French oak can lead to unintended results without careful planning. Combine that in with the fact that the wood is more expensive than American oak and companies using it to age wines and spirits can greatly benefit from knowing how their liquid is going to react to the wood. It’s long been known that trees from different forests that are made into barrels will have different chemical compositions (the concept of terroir), and thus different levels of tannins. There can also be significant variation in trees just a few feet apart or from staves made from different parts of the same tree. What’s more, there can be distinctions in the grain width, which affects the extraction time for getting the tannins out of the wood.

“Even if you’ve gone to great lengths and you bought wood from the same forest, you still aren’t getting the same sort of precision and consistency [as with OakScan],” Crandell said. When Radoux uses OakScan to analyze staves bound for production, each piece of wood is assigned a barcode and a letter corresponding to its “tannic potential,” according to the cooperage. This not only helps with sorting, but it allows the company to build barrels with a specific polyphenolic index (PI), ensuring the wood is suitable for the style a winery or vineyard is trying to make. And since every stave is scanned, there’s uniformity of the tannin content of each barrel and all the data makes the end result repeatable.

OakScan also allows customers to select wood from different forests, but not by sourcing actual staves from those places. Instead, Radoux can build the tannin profile and replicate the terroir in a much more consistent way.

“If someone wanted a Voges-style barrel, we could work that out based on tannin level,” said Radoux national sales manager Craig Holme. “We can be more precise on what [the results are] going to be. Someone else will get a barrel that may be from two different trees [in that forest], and they might be completely different.” According to Holme, Radoux can pull 100,000% extracts from the staves that they can then put in a sample of a prospective customer’s product to show them what it’s going to do.

Originally developed exclusively for wine making, OakScan was initially used to analyze the chemical characteristics of barrel staves. Once the system was developed and fine-tuned, Radoux began using the same technology for tank staves. Thinner than a barrel stave, these pieces of wood allow for a quicker extraction process, which at the time was intended for larger volumes of wine. Where barrels are only toasted on the inside, tank staves are finished on all six surfaces and they’re designed to be completely submerged.

“Typically, the toasting process for wine is much more precise than the charring process for spirits,” Crandell explained. “So we came up with something very precise and very repeatable.” However, OakScan hadn’t really been used extensively in the spirits industry, he continued, except for a “small, experimental project” he had done a few years ago. Eventually, Crandell said he started working with Penelope and another micro-distiller to see if the detailed analysis of French oak could work for spirits.

Penelope Bourbon

Penelope isn’t your traditional bourbon maker. The company doesn’t actually distill anything. Instead, it sources aged bourbon from MGP: a producer of distilled spirits with operations in ​​Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, in addition to Mexico and Northern Ireland. MGP has its own brands of spirits (it actually announced the acquisition of Penelope earlier this week), but it also sells bourbon, rye whiskey, gin and more to other companies to package and sell on their own. Penelope buys bourbon of various ages and mashbills from MGP and blends it to their specifications. Sometimes they’ll bottle those blends as-in (Four Grain Bourbon and Barrel Strength Bourbon), while others undergo additional aging before they’re packaged.

While Radoux primarily caters to vineyards in France, Italy, Spain, the US and more, its colleagues at Speyside Cooperage (both owned by TFF Group) typically work with breweries and distilleries. Paladini and Penelope COO and founder Daniel Polise initially worked with Crandell to secure Rosé casks for secondary aging of its bourbon. They then collaborated with Speyside Cooperage to source toasted American oak barrels for a secondary finishing of its bourbon. For that treatment, Penelope would create a blend of aged bourbon and put it in barrels with varying char and toast levels for a period of time. In the end, Paladini and Polise discovered that even with the same bourbon in the same barrels, samples from each would be very different.

“It would go in completely different, wild directions,” Paladini observed. “We found that to be great, and that’s why that product was incredible.” Indeed, Penelope Toasted Series Bourbon won gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2022. The company leaned into the variation in the aging results, indicating the char and toast levels on the bottles of each batch. Of course, that means each batch is quite different.

Following the challenges of the Toasted Series, Polise tried using some of the OakScan staves in some samples. “We have so many different products that show up and people want us to try and use them,” he admitted. “I finally tried it and I was just shocked.” Polise explained that the OakScan French oak “stood out from the others greatly.”

Thus the idea for Penelope’s Architect Bourbon was hatched. The company was hoping to tap into the success of Toasted Series by once again being transparent about the types of wood they were using for secondary aging. But while OakScan can create the ultimate consistency batch to batch, Paladini says he and Polise weren’t sure they really wanted that.

Photo by Billy Steele/Engadget

“Our first thought was to take an exploratory approach and highlight the actual flavor profile on the back of the label. That profile is coming directly from the oak engineer in France when they run the OakScan process,” said Paladini. On each bottle of Architect, there’s a spider graph that illustrates the characteristics of that particular “build.” The company is playing up the idea of constructing a flavor profile, so it calls each batch a “build” instead. Hence the name Architect.

With Architect, Penelope has created six different “builds” or stave selections and they’re all different. However, they’re still consistent, as Crandell explained. “We can make a build again, it’s repeatable,” he noted. And that’s because OakScan allows for that consistency rather than the company hoping they can recreate a hit. They will, of course, need to replicate the blended bourbon from MGP that undergoes the secondary aging in order to do so. Even if they can’t, the company can still give a new blend the same “build” as a previous version of Architect. Since the wood analysis gives them so much control over the end result, the combinations – and the creative potential – are seemingly endless.

“[OakScan] not only gives you the ability to be precise, but it also gives you the ability to be creative,” Crandell said. “If you know what the end result is going to be, you can change the end result – you can control the end result.”

For Penelope, French oak that’s been analyzed with OakScan is only being used in Architect right now. But, Paladini and Polise aren’t ruling out using the staves for another product in the future.

“We’re constantly playing with different woods and finishes,” Polise noted. “So whatever matches next, we may release. It just works like that.”

Now's the time to go shopping if you've been tempted by Bose's QuietComfort Earbuds II but were put off by the high initial price. As part of a broader sale on Bose products, Amazon is selling the premium wireless earbuds for $249, or $50 off. That's the best price we've seen all year, and puts them into more direct competition with the AirPods Pro and similar rivals. If you prefer over-ear headphones, the QuietComfort 45 headphones are down to $279.

The QuietComfort Earbuds II are a good choice if you value active noise cancellation (ANC) first and foremost. It's strong enough that you can block even loud noises — ideal for a flight or train ride. The buds have a more dynamic and open sound than their predecessors, and they're more comfortable than before. If you mainly listen to music to escape the pressures of everyday life, they're worth considering.

There are caveats. You won't find multipoint connectivity or wireless charging like you do with other wireless earbuds in this class. Call quality is mediocre, too. It's still hard to top the ANC performance, though, and the sale price eliminates our main objection to Bose's offering.

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Fortnite creator Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 allows anyone to quickly build 3D worlds, so it's great not just for games, but Hollywood virtual sets and more. Until now, recent Mac users have relied on Rosetta technology to run it, but Epic has just released a new update, version 5.2, that works natively on Apple Silicon. That should allow for significantly improved performance on M1 and M2 Macs. 

There's more news for Apple users as well. Epic unveiled a new iPad app (below) for virtual productions that works with the Unreal Engine's ICVFX (In-Camera VFX) editor. It offers "an intuitive touch-based interface for stage operations such as color grading, light card placement, and nDisplay management tasks from anywhere within the LED volume," the company said. In other words, it lets DPs, VFX folks and others tweak lighting and more on virtual sets from a simple, portable interface.

Epic Games

The update is interesting in the context of Apple's antitrust dispute with Epic Games over Fortnite commissions on the App Store. Apple largely won that fight, as an appeal panel found that the company wasn't a monopolist in the distribution of iOS apps. Back in 2020, Apple tried to suspend Epic Games' developer account, but that move was later blocked by a judge. 

Other new features introduced with the Unreal Engine 5.2 update include a "Procedural Content Generation framework" that lets you populate large scenes with the Unreal Engine assets of your choice, making it faster to build large worlds. And another feature called Substrate allows material creation with more control over the look and feel of objects used in in real-time applications like games or for linear content creation. Epic demonstrated that using its previous Rivian demo, giving a metallic-looking paint job to the R1T electric pickup.                                                                                                                         

It’s a huge week for news: Google I/O happened, and we finally got a close look at the Pixel Fold and the company’s latest AI plans. Engadget Deputy Editor Nathan Ingraham also joins to discuss his review of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the follow-up to one of the greatest games ever made. (No pressure, Nate!) We also chat about Nintendo’s confirmation that it won’t be announcing any new hardware until next year, and the perils of chatbots serving as the latest avatars for Hindu gods in India.

Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• Google’s Pixel Fold was finally announced (it’s $1,799) – 1:25

• Also announced at Google I/O: a ton of Bard integration in search, Pixel Tablet and Pixel 7a – 14:43

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Anthropic says it has vastly expanded the amount of information its generative AI, Claude, is able to process. Claude has gone from having a limit of 9,000 tokens to 100,000 tokens, which corresponds to roughly 75,000 words. That's a full novel. To put that into perspective, Claude now has the ability to easily read and finish Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (74,240 words), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (74,800 words) and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (69,000 words). And, as The Verge notes, the company says Claude can read and analyze information from each book in under a minute. 

Generative AIs like Claude are still limited by the number of "tokens" they can process. As OpenAI explains in its help page, you can think of tokens as pieces of words. The AI cuts up words for processing, and they're not always chopped up from the start to the end of each word, since spaces and other characters are also included. At the moment, OpenAI's standard GPT-4 model is capable of processing 8,000 tokens, while an extended version can process 32,000 tokens. Meanwhile, its publicly available ChatGPT chatbot has a limit of around 4,000 tokens. 

Now Claude has a much wider context window than all of them. According to Anthropic, it loaded Great Gatsby onto the AI during testing and modified a single line to say Mr. Carraway was "a software engineer that works on machine learning tooling at Anthropic." Claude was able to spot how the book was modified within 22 seconds. 

The AI's expanded context window is now available to Anthropic's business partners who are using its API. Anthropic says the capability will help businesses quickly digest and summarize lengthy financial statements and research papers, assess pieces of legislation, identify risks and arguments across legal documents and comb through dense developer documentation, among other possible tasks. 

How do you follow up one of the most well-regarded and critically acclaimed games of the last decade? Well, you keep a lot of things the same, but shake it up. The first few hours of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom take place entirely in the sky, but the game leads you through a handful of shrines to get a new set of abilities, just like you did on the Hyrule plateau in Breath of the Wild.

Now, there are islands in the sky and underground grottos to explore, assisted by some powerful new skills, including Fuse, which lets you stick objects to weapons and arrows to enhance them, and Ultrahand, where you can stick objects together to build basically anything you want, including vehicles. Read on for how this translates to the world of Zelda and Link – which is what I’m doing while I wait for my copy to land before the weekend.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

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Elon Musk says a new Twitter CEO is starting in six weeks

He will be CTO and executive chair.

Musk has announced a replacement chief executive will start at Twitter in roughly six weeks. While he hasn't identified the new leader by name, he indicated he’d hired a woman for the role. Musk will stay on as executive chair and chief technical officer covering "product, software and sysops." Hours after Musk's announcement, The Wall Street Journal reported that NBCUniversal advertising exec Linda Yaccarino "is in talks" to take over the CEO role at Twitter. Yaccarino is known for being an "industry advocate for finding better ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising," according to The Journal. Sounds fun. Musk said in December he would honor the results of a poll he made, asking whether or not he should bow out. He said he would leave as soon as he found someone "foolish enough to take the job."

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Sony's Xperia I V phone is a photo and video powerhouse

It borrows camera features like Product Showcase from its Alpha series.

Sony

Sony is still making smartphones, and its latest is the flagship Xperia 1 V, for both photographers and vloggers. The Xperia 1 V has a new image sensor called Exmor T for Mobile, designed to be faster and work better with computational (AI) photography while offering "approximately double" the low-light performance of the Xperia 1 IV. For vloggers and content creators, it now features the same Product Showcase setting found on Sony's vlogging cameras, like the ZV-E1, which will keep items locked in focus while blurring out the background. The new sensor also promises improved skin tones, thanks to extra saturation available on the sensor. It also has a new voice priority mic near the rear camera. As with past Xperia models, the catch here is the price: The Xperia 1 V starts at $1,400.

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Disney+ and Hulu will merge into a single app later this year

But they’ll still be available as 'standalone options.'

A "one-app experience" that combines Disney+ and Hulu content will launch in late 2023, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced during the company's latest earnings call. He said the company will continue offering Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ as standalone options, but combining services "is a logical progression." In addition to announcing the combined streaming app, Iger has also revealed Disney+ is getting another price increase after adding $3 on top of its ad-free streaming tier's monthly fee in December. He didn't say when the company is raising the service's prices, but when it does, the ad-free and ad-supported tiers will cost more than $11 and $8, respectively.

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Fairphone launches a fully repairable set of over-ear headphones

The Fairbuds XL are not buds, though.

Ten years since Fairphone launched its first repairable smartphone, now it's bringing its processes to wireless over-ear headphones. They’ll include active noise cancellation (ANC), multiple audio modes, two-point Bluetooth connection and a two-year warranty. The company says Fairbuds XL (these are not buds) use 100 percent recycled aluminum, 100 percent recycled tin in its solder paste and 80 percent recycled plastic. It added it has integrated Fairtrade Gold into its supply chain, and uses 100 percent vegan leather for both the ear cushions and headband.

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'Mouse' is a first-person shooter inspired by vintage Disney

Think 'Cuphead' with Tommy guns.

Mouse

Mouse is a shooter inspired by the style of 1930's cartoons from Disney and other studios. The (very) early footage shows barebones maps and gameplay mechanics, but if it gets close to the magic of Cuphead, it could be a lot of fun.

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Tinder is for finding love — or at least a temporary connection — but the app’s backers aren’t interested in helping people expand their connections beyond the narrow confines of its own jurisdiction. The company says that it has identified an issue with users turning their profiles into spaces for “making money,” and will scrub social handles from public profiles, as well as tweaking its community guidelines to prohibit the sharing of usernames or references to other outbound links. In a statement rich in euphemism, the platform reminds users not to “advertise, promote social handles or links to gain followers, sell things, fundraise or campaign," which we suspect includes users who add their Linktree username to guide people toward online stores or content marketplaces.

The policy change comes as part of a series of updated community guidelines that Tinder claims will “reinforce authenticity, respect and inclusivity.” Besides the social handle removal, most of the policies are requests to users, such as telling people to respect boundaries and not to share private chats in a public setting. The dating app points to its younger membership (most users are 18 to 25) as motivation for making these appeals. “To guide these younger daters as they start their dating journey, Tinder is using this policy refresh to remind and educate members about healthy dating habits — both online and in real life,” Ehren Schlue, SVP of Member Strategy at Tinder, said in a statement.

It’s unclear how exactly Tinder plans to scrub social handles from bios or prevent people from sharing them in chats instead. The company encourages users to report anyone violating the rule, but a quick bio share over messages might not motivate anyone to do so. Removing social handles also interferes with people who share them to circumvent swipe limits or remove the need to match. Plus, there's the issue of determining if a person is who they say they are. Alongside the social handles announcement, Tinder reminds people to be honest and not create fake personas. But, without any access to a person’s social media, it might be harder to know for sure.