Though this year is by no means one to celebrate, there were still some bright spots in the world of tech. It’s with plenty of loathing that we admit this: NFTs somehow won this year. They’ve taken over. Reddit’s day traders also deserve recognition for the way they’ve managed to manifest GameStop’s slogan, “Power to the players.”

Also (and this might be the most painful to acknowledge), the Metaverse (sorta) took off this year. At least in terms of our lexicon, with mentions of the word skyrocketing since Mark Zuckerberg uttered it while announcing plan for a richer VR and AR-focused world. Maybe people were confused between “metaverse” and “multiverse” as in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?

Besides the things we love to hate, there are some products this year we genuinely liked as well. Apple continued to impress with its M1 chips and, more importantly, gave users a way to repair their own devices (kinda). Google’s first-ever mobile chip powered clever experiences on the latest Pixel phones and showcased the company’s AI and software prowess at a competitive price. As we continue to be bombarded by depressing news every day, it’s worth taking the time to reflect on the wins this year, no matter how tiny.

Noam Galai via Getty Images

NFTs

2021 has not been a quiet year, so NFTs deserve something approaching praise for securing a spot in the highlights reel. NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are an attempt to create an immutable digital asset in an environment where such a thing has historically been tricky. For the industry’s proponents, it’s a way of imposing some form of scarcity on digital artifacts that you can’t easily make scarce. Anyone can right-click and save a picture of a monkey wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt after all. But only the person who paid a lot of money for the NFT can go around calling themselves the “owner” of the same. As Nietzche didn’t say, NFTs are the lie agreed upon, suggesting that people respect the owner of the certificated copy of something over everything else.

So far, the biggest and most notable moves in the NFT space have happened in the art market, with pieces being bought and sold for eye-watering numbers. On March 11th, digital artist Beeple sold Everydays: The First 5,000 Days at Christie’s auction house for $69,346,250. Those hefty sums are, in some people’s minds, justified because they believe that NFTs will become the new crypto, with everyone trying to get aboard the bandwagon before it goes big. After all, there are lots of folks who got rich during the Bitcoin boom that want to further enhance their fortunes, while some who were left behind now hope to get in on the ground floor on the next big thing. Others, meanwhile, think that the big craze in NFTs right now is to help folks move large quantities of money around away from the auspices of, you know, regulators.

The NFT market is so awash with speculator cash that it’s normal to have... questions. A recent Harvard Business Review article talks about how commerce can’t work without “clear property rights,” which NFTs help to impose. There’s also the matter of whether NFTs could better enable more reliable and secure ticketing and permission systems? I’ll be honest, I’m personally unconvinced by the argument that NFTs offer rights of ownership, since they don’t necessarily confer upon the buyer the proper rights of ownership.

These issues are, however, going to be worked out over the next few years, and it will only be when the speculation has died down that we’ll see if NFTs have any residual worth. And, hey, not every deeply-technical cryptographic ownership record gets their own SNL sketch shortly after they broke into the mainstream, do they.

— Daniel Cooper

The Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent the term, but by rebadging Facebook as "Meta," he helped kick off a wave of interest in the metaverse. While it was originally a dystopian view of cyberspace via Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, the metaverse now represents the next big online goldrush. You can think of it as the logical step forward from the mobile internet, a world where our online experiences can easily transition between multiple devices. And eventually, it could be something we interact with via AR and VR glasses.

To be clear, we still don't have an exact idea of what the metaverse will be. The Meta renaming could easily be seen as a way for Zuckerberg to avoid his responsibilities as the leader of a fundamentally broken social media company. But other companies have been exploring this idea for years: Microsoft's HoloLens has proven to be surprisingly useful for commercial and front-line workers, and it's also core to Mesh, the company's ambitious solution for virtual meetings. The Borg-like Google Glass was widely ridiculed, but its failure hasn't stopped Google from thinking about its role in the metaverse, either.

Maybe it'll take a killer new device, like Apple's fabled AR glasses, to bring the metaverse into focus. Or maybe it'll go the way of wearables — a category of devices that's useful for some people, but not necessarily essential for everyone. Either way, it's something that will forever be tied to 2021.

— Devindra Hardawar

Home fitness tech is here to stay

As the pandemic kept many of us indoors and out of gyms, companies like Peloton, Apple, Tonal and even Amazon were able to pull us into new fitness habits and equipment.

Apple

Meanwhile, major fitness studios and gyms like Equinox, Soulcycle, OrangeTheory and F45 have modulated (while some created from scratch) their online services. Many companies expanded replayable class options or added live lessons, leaderboards and more in a bid to keep members fit – and keep those membership dues coming in.

COVID-19 offered a chance to shift our workout habits and reduce gym costs. Why pay $50 for a high-intensity interval training gym membership when I can track myself in Apple’s Fitness Plus classes, SharePlay with my friends and jump in my own shower, all for just $10 a month?

Of course, the comparison isn’t oranges for oranges, and despite cheerleading Peloton trainers and form corrections from gym coaches over video livestreams, it’s very hard to get the degree of attention gained from in-person training. That’s likely one reason why at-home exercise injuries have never been higher. The Wall Street Journal reported that emergency room visits after home workouts increased by more than 48% from the end of 2019 through the end of 2020, according to a survey by Medicare Advantage.

However, just like traditional gyms did when the pandemic first hit, these businesses have to figure out how to hold onto their customers.

Tonal

Tonal is a ‘Peloton for weight training' product that Engadget tested back in 2018. When our usual bench-press machines and squat racks were locked inside gyms over the last year and a half, Tonal saw demand for its resistance-training system rocket. Sales grew more than eight times year-over-year. In a bid to hold onto these new customers, the company recently introduced live classes for Tonal owners, with direct feedback from coaches and classes reportedly calibrated for each user.

Meanwhile, Peloton, arguably the most recognizable at-home fitness company, faces more competition from (and litigation with) rivals and a tougher business outlook. After a rough earnings report in November, the company said it didn’t expect to be profitable again until 2023. Worse, its Bike was involved in the death of an important character in the Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That. But the company has plans (and cheeky responses). It’s integrated into many corporate fitness plans, launched its first exercise game, announced a fitness camera for strength training and finally — added a pause button.

The challenge will be keeping many of us from returning to our old gyms, cycling commutes, or our old, less healthy habits when things eventually return to normal.

— Mat Smith

Apple takes baby steps toward the right to repair

Apple continued to impress the industry with its M1 Pro and M1 Max chips this year, putting them in new MacBooks that garnered rave reviews. And though the iPhone 13 Pro is just catching up to Android phones with its 120Hz screen, it's an undeniably good device with solid cameras and excellent performance. The Apple Watch Series 7 isn't much different from its predecessor, barring its larger display, but it's still the best smartwatch around. Plus, Apple TV+ gained much more credibility in 2021 with the giant pile of awards its original series Ted Lasso brought home.

But the biggest thing that Apple did this year was to start selling DIY iPhone and Mac repair kits to consumers. After it was discovered Face ID on an iPhone 13 would stop working if a third party replaced its screen, the company first issued a software fix for this specific issue and announced the repair kits shortly after. The move was hailed by activists as a victory for the right-to-repair movement, given the company’s history of making it obnoxiously difficult for you to get your Apple products fixed by anyone else.

Of course, Apple could still do better — activists say the company’s plans could be more comprehensive, for example. But this is a major reversal of policy that shows the company is opening up, ever so slightly. Last year, it allowed users to set third-party browsers and email apps as their default on iPhones and iPads. This year, it introduced FaceTime on the web as a means to allow PC and Android users to join calls that they had previously been excluded from. The company may never fully embrace integrating different ecosystems into its walled garden, but it seems they’re at least listening to what people want and taking small steps towards giving users what they deserve.

— Cherlynn Low

Gamestop

At the start of 2021, Gamestop’s share price was $17.25. As of this writing, it’s $136.88. This year has been so long that it’s easy to forget many things that happened in January, including the Reddit-driven short squeeze that pushed Gamestop’s stock price to as high as $500 at its peak. Despite subsequent criticism, calls for better regulation, a congressional hearing on what happened and multiple class-action lawsuits having been filed against parties like brokering app Robinhood, here we are 12 months later with the company’s stock still higher than it’s ever been before 2021.

Andrew Kelly / reuters

Of course, a company’s share price isn’t a true indicator of its overall performance and health. But this is a far cry from 2019 when GameStop was posting tens of millions in losses and planning to shutter up to 200 stores. In 2020, its main challenges were around trying to keep its outlets open in the face of stay-home mandates and making sure it had enough consoles to sell.

This year, in possibly the most 2021 combination of words ever, GameStop announced it’s working on an NFT platform based on Ethereum. It also signed a lease for a new 530,000 square-foot fulfilment center in Nevada and opened a new customer care center in Florida. It made $1.18 billion in the second quarter compared to $942 million in the same period in 2020. That could partly be due to the fact that Sony and Microsoft launched their consoles after the second quarter in 2020. Basically, 2021 has been a great year for GameStop, and not just for its business.

Discovery+ is even working on a documentary (narrated by “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort) on the entire fiasco titled GameStop:The Wall Street Hijack. Nine other films based on these events are reportedly in the works, according to Vulture. Gamestop wasn’t the only company that Reddit’s day traders flocked to in their nostalgia-driven frenzy, either. Companies like BlackBerry and AMC also saw their share prices surge, with the latter’s stock jumping 480 percent at its peak. GameStop’s slogan uncannily sums up the situation: “Power to the players.”

— C.L.

Devindra Hardawar / Engadget

Windows 11

If you had told me in January that Microsoft had its Windows 10 successor primed and ready for release by the end of the year, I would have laughed in your face. But Windows 11 is actually here, and it's a pretty solid step forward aesthetically (despite some clunky usability issues). I'd bet even Microsoft was surprised it managed to make that happen.

Windows 11 rose from the ashes of Windows 10X, an OS variant that was originally supposed to focus on dual-screen devices, but was eventually canceled in May. That would explain why Windows 11 feels more like a fresh coat of paint on its predecessor. But despite that inauspicious start, it's still a worthwhile update: there's more of an emphasis on security, and the facelift brings some Mac-like pleasantries into the typically stark world of Windows.

It's not a complete success — upgrading is an annoying process if you've got a self-built PC, and very old computers won't be able to upgrade at all (at least, not without going through a manual ISO installation). But at the very least, Microsoft managed to keep most of what made Windows 10 such a successful operating system, while also delivering a more mindful experience for PC users.

— D. H.

David Imel for Engadget

Google Pixel 6 Pro

The Pixel 6 Pro is my favorite Pixel yet. Yes, I wish Google offered a smaller handset in its latest flagship series, but that complaint aside, there’s plenty to love. The company’s first-ever mobile chip Tensor powers the phone’s impressive AI features like live translation in messages and captions, as well as smarter voice typing features.

Most of all, I adore the Pixel 6 Pro’s cameras. If I’m headed out somewhere that I have the slightest sense might warrant some sort of picture-taking, I make sure to bring the 6 Pro with me. Its portrait mode, which I abuse for my food photos, is superior to every other phone I’ve used, and frankly, I’m partial to Google’s colors and clarity.

Plus, bonus features like Magic Eraser, Face Unblur and Action Pan give me the option to add fun effects or clean up my shots. Everyone I’ve taken pictures of has been impressed by the quality. Of course, the Pixel 6 is not without its flaws. Setting aside my complaint about its size, the Pixel 6 Pro also has a finicky in-screen fingerprint sensor. Google has also had to issue several fixes in recent weeks to address bugs that themselves were caused by over the air updates. Still, as a showcase for Google’s strengths in software and AI, the Pixel 6 Pro fully delivers. Best of all, it does so for hundreds of dollars less than rival flagships.

— C.L.

Samsung foldables 

In an admittedly niche industry, Samsung has pulled far ahead. Sure, it was one of the first to try its hand at foldables, but it's also arguably the last one standing. The foldable phone race really kicked off when relative unknown Royole showed off the first working prototype at CES 2019. Soon after, Huawei and Samsung announced their own devices. The original Mate X and Galaxy Fold made the rounds at various press events after, but only Samsung eventually sold its first-gen foldable to the general public (outside of China, anyway).

David Imel for Engadget

Motorola jumped on the trend, capitalizing on the sheer nostalgia value of its Razr Flip phone. Alas, all these initial attempts were doomed to fail. Foldables, it turns out, with their soft, vulnerable displays and damage-prone hinges, are hard to nail. Worse, the Razr Flip's screen just felt weird and flimsy, and its hinge would make a cracking sound when you open or close the phone.

After a slew of reports of broken review units, Samsung returned with updated iterations of the Fold. It also released the Flip series, a smaller, Razr-like version that received its share of early complaints. Yet, today, Samsung not only continues to produce these foldables, but at cheaper prices, too. The Z series is now in its third generation, and Samsung said it shipped four times more foldables in 2021 than in 2020. While Huawei also unveiled a third version this year, its foldables haven’t been available in most places outside of China. We've also yet to see a new version of the Razr this year, although Motorola did roll out a 5G-capable update in 2020 that we never got to test. Companies like Oppo and Xiaomi have also unveiled their own foldables recently, but they’re relatively new to the game.

By bringing the price of the Z Flip 3 down to a more competitive $999 while continuing to improve the durability and usefulness of its products, Samsung has shown it may be the only company with the resources and expertise to continue to deliver foldable phones, even if they may never gain mainstream popularity.

— C.L.

You just got your hands on a new phone. Naturally, your first inclination is to head to the App Store or the Google Play Store to download your favorite apps to your shiny new device. While the Engadget team tries to keep our phones relatively unencumbered, there are some apps we can't live without because they make our work and daily lives easier. Below you'll find a dozen of the best we think you should try.

1Password

1Password

If you only take one piece of advice away from this article, it's that you should download a password manager. It doesn't have to be the one we recommend here. However, we like 1Password for a handful of reasons. Not only will it let you generate strong passwords for all your online accounts, but it also has built-in support for two-factor authentication. That means you don't need to download a separate app like Authy to make your logins as secure as possible. If you have access to a Fastmail account, you can also use 1Password to generate random emails for your logins, giving you another way to protect your privacy. It's also just a well-designed app that's a pleasure to use.

FireFox

Firefox

If it's been a few years since you last used Firefox, now is a great time to revisit it. Partway through last year, Mozilla overhauled the Android version of its browser to bring over many of its best desktop features to mobile. That release saw Mozilla add more robust support for third-party add-ons. It also brought over its Enhanced Tracking Protection feature, which stops trackers from misusing your browsing data. Separately, with Apple allowing you to change your default browser since the release of iOS 14, there's never been a better time for iPhone users to liberate themselves from Safari.

Headspace

Headspace

I subscribed to Headspace at the start of the pandemic. Since then, it's become one of the few apps I use every day. Yes, Headspace is a meditation and mindfulness app, but it's also so much more than that. You'll find it also has a mix of music designed to help you focus and workouts for unwinding at the end of a long day. Across the board, everything it offers is excellent, and you'll find yourself turning to it for more than just peace of mind.

Hopper

Hopper

If you plan to fly somewhere soon, install Hopper on your phone. While it has grown over the years to include a variety of features, at its core, Hopper is one of the best ways to save money on plane tickets. Once you tell the app where and when you want to fly, it’ll tell you whether you should book your flight now or wait. In the latter case, it’ll notify you when it estimates you'll get the best deal. The beauty of Hopper is it will save you from constantly checking websites like Google Flights and Kayak.

Libby

Libby

If you want to do more reading in 2022, forget about buying books through Amazon and download Libby instead. If you're not familiar with the app, it allows you to borrow ebooks, digital magazines and graphic novels from your local library. All you need is a library card, which most systems across the US offer for free. Sometimes you have to wait to borrow the books you want to read most, but you'll find Libby will dramatically expand your reading list.

Open Table

Open Table

With restaurants reopening in cities throughout the US and the rest of the world, there's a good chance you plan to eat out sometime soon — and so does nearly everyone else. That means you'll likely need a reservation to dine at some of the most popular spots in your city. In North America, the closest you'll find to a single platform that nearly every restaurant uses is Open Table. For that reason alone, it's a must-download if you eat out a lot. It's also a handy tool for discovering new spots to visit since you can filter by cuisine and area.

Transit

Transit

There's nothing worse than waiting for a bus on a cold winter’s day or watching three go by one after another. Avoid both situations with one of the best public transit planning apps on Android and iOS. Transit excels where other apps in the category fail thanks to its clean, easy-to-use interface that highlights all the options near you. It also has one of the better algorithms for predicting departure times, so you'll know exactly when you need to run out of your house or apartment to catch the next bus, train or streetcar.

Paprika

Paprika

Paprika is the best $5 you can spend to make feeding yourself even easier. At its core, it allows you to download recipes from your favorite websites and make them accessible on all your devices. You can also use it to scale the size of the meal you're about to cook and convert between metric and imperial measurements. Add to that a meal planner, shopping lists and a tool for tracking the ingredients in your pantry, and you have an indispensable app for home cooks.

Pocket Casts

Pocket Casts

With podcasts becoming ever more popular with each passing year, there's a good chance you already have a handful of favorite shows you listen to every week. As much as Spotify would like to convince you it has the best podcast app, that distinction goes to Pocket Casts. We like it because it offers a consistently great experience across every system it supports. And if you use a mix of platforms from Apple, Google and Microsoft, you don't have to worry about syncing, either. It’s also nice to use software that doesn’t feel caught between two worlds in the way that Spotify does. Pocket Casts isn’t trying to be anything more than an app for listening to podcasts. That’s not something you can say of Spotify, and it’s often a source of frustration for those who turn to it for music.

Pocket

Pocket

Another way to read more in 2022 is to download Pocket. It's among the most popular read-it-later apps out there, allowing you to save articles you find online. Much like Pocket Casts, what makes this app compelling is that it offers a consistently excellent device-agnostic experience, making it a great option for those who haven't gone all-in on one ecosystem. Whether you use Chrome, Safari or Edge, you can install a browser extension to save articles you stumble upon. You can then read them later without distractions on your phone or tablet. Just don't forget to make a dent in your Pocket reading list occasionally.

Telegram / Signal

Telegram

We understand, asking your friends and family to install another messaging app on their phone can sometimes feel like a Sisyphean task, but the effort has also never been more worth it. In Telegram and Signal, you'll find two of the most secure chat apps on the market. We especially like Telegram here at Engadget because of how complete it feels from a feature standpoint. For example, it includes an edit feature that comes in handy when you make a typo, and a Secret Chat tool for when you want messages to disappear. If you do make the switch to Telegram or Signal, you'll also free yourself of the Meta ecosystem. That might not seem like much, but when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went down earlier this year, it left many people without a way to communicate with their friends and loved ones.

Tunnelbear

Tunnelbear

After a Password manager, one of the best tools you can use to safeguard your online privacy is a VPN. Again, there are many options out there, but we like TunnelBear for its simplicity and whimsical ursine theme. A VPN isn't as essential as a password manager, but you'll want to get one if you frequently find yourself traveling or using the public WiFi at places like cafes and libraries. Using a VPN in those contexts will ensure your connection is protected with encryption so that any information you send over remains safe and private.

Snapseed

Snapseed

Most recent phones come with great cameras. Still, even with the latest iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or Google Pixel, almost every photo can benefit from an edit before you share it. The options you have for photo editing apps are nearly endless, but if you want something that works well, look no further than Snapseed. It's an old favorite that offers a comprehensive suite of editing options but never gets bogged down in too many sliders and dials. Best of all, it makes it easy to save edits to your camera roll and upload them to apps like Instagram.

News of the global chip shortage has been so far-reaching this year, it's become a meme. "I'm sorry I forgot to do the dishes, there's a global chip shortage." But as with many online jokes, there's a kernel of truth to it. The semiconductor chip crisis is real, and it's had a serious impact on our lives. Cars are more expensive and harder to build. Computer makers are rushing to keep up with an insatiable consumer demand for remote work and school devices. And countless products have been delayed, with release dates being pushed like dominoes throughout 2021 and into the coming years.

While it's an issue that affects practically everyone, the chip shortage has been particularly painful for gamers. A year after the PlayStation 5's launch, it's still practically impossible to order one. (At least, not without paying an exorbitant markup, or following stock bots like a machine.) And PC players itching to upgrade their GPUs, who have already gotten used to dwindling hardware supplies and skyrocketing prices, will have to live with their old video cards a bit longer.

As Forrester Analytics' Glenn O'Donnell tells Engadget, the issue is mostly a simple supply and demand problem. You can point to several reasons for that: carmakers lowered their hardware orders at the start of the pandemic, with the assumption that consumers wouldn't be interested in buying new vehicles. It turns out the opposite was true – the overwhelming demand has pushed used car prices up significantly. Chipmakers were also forced to keep up with a rising demand for PCs, game consoles and a wide assortment of gadgets while also dealing with production slowdowns amid COVID lockdowns and other precautions.

Aaron Souppouris/Engadget

"I'd like to say things have improved, but they actually have gotten a little bit worse, and I'm not surprised," O'Donnell said in a recent interview with Engadget. In April, he argued that the global chip shortage would continue throughout 2022 and into 2023. Now, he's even more convinced that we won't see any major relief until then. While future chip fabs from Intel, TSMC and Samsung could boost supplies, it will still take at least two years from when those companies break ground to when they're up and running. Intel began construction on its two Arizona chip factories in September, and it doesn't expect to have them operational until 2024.

Basically, get used to chip shortage, as we'll be suffering through it for a while. In an interview with Nikkei last week, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also confirmed that he expects the situation to last until 2023. "COVID disrupted the supply chains, causing it to go negative," he said during a press event in Malaysia, where the company is investing $7.1 billion in manufacturing and packaging lines. "Demand exploded to 20 percent year-over-year and disrupted supply chains created a very large gap ... and that exploding demand has persisted."

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang echoed that sentiment in a recent Yahoo Finance interview, saying he doesn’t think there are any “magic bullets” when it comes to dealing with the supply chain. Huang also noted that NVIDIA’s own group of suppliers is multi-sourced and diverse, so the shortage shouldn’t dramatically affect the development of new products. But NVIDIA has also struggled to keep up with gamer demands even before the pandemic. Scalpers and cryptominers usually bought up all of the available stock, leaving average consumers with a limited amount of inventory from stores and resellers.

While Huang expects production to ramp back up in 2023, he also believes the pandemic-driven push towards buying more computers and gaming hardware is here to stay. “I think these are permanent conditions, and we’re going to see new computers being built for quite a while,” he told Yahoo. “People are building home offices, and you could see all of the implications.”

In the US, there’s a glimmer of hope that the Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), which includes $52 billion in funding for the CHIPs for America Act, could spur on more semiconductor production. But after passing the Senate earlier this year, the legislation has stalled in the House of Representatives, where Republican members said they would block USICA. The bill also includes $190 billion towards improving American semiconductor R&D, all in the hopes of becoming more competitive with China, which dramatically boosted its chip production over the last decade.

The manufacturing conflict between the two countries came to a head this year, when the Biden administration reportedly discouraged Intel from ramping up its chip production in China. And, of course, it doesn’t help that the US and China have been engaged in a quiet cyberwar for years. That’s despite the agreement made between President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015, where both leaders said they wouldn’t support or engage in online intellectual property theft. Most recently, the US, UK and security experts blamed China for the massive Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year, which infiltrated over 30,000 American companies.

Given the many obstacles in the way of fixing the chip supply chain, there’s one thing everyone may have to get used to: Just be prepared to live with your gear longer. O'Donnell says he’s noticed corporate suppliers trying to eke out another year or two before they refresh their business machines. For gamers, there’s surely a healthy backlog of titles for your existing consoles, so don’t stress about not being able to grab that PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X so much. And despite the droolworthy benchmarks we’ve seen from NVIDIA’s new RTX 30-series cards, you can still play almost every major game on a 20-series GPU (and even many older ones!).

The chip shortage could conceivably stretch out this latest console generation, as well. But really, who knows what the gaming world will look like in five to seven years? The PS5 and Xbox Series X are already plenty fast, with support for 4K, 120FPS and a bit of ray tracing. And if we’ve learned anything from the success of the Switch, it’s that you can do a lot with aging hardware.

By 2026, it may also make more sense to stream games over the cloud, instead of demanding the fastest hardware possible under your TV. But even if the cloud ends up dominating the gaming landscape within the decade, it’ll still rely on servers, displays, accessories and powerful networking hardware to make it all possible. Hopefully by then, suppliers will actually be able to keep up with our insatiable desire for chips.

Intel is learning first-hand about the challenges of pleasing both its home country and China. The New York Timesreports Intel has apologized on Chinese social networks after it sent local suppliers a letter saying it wouldn't use labor and products from the province of Xinjiang. The company said it was honoring US sanctions against the province, not outlining a political viewpoint like social media users, celebrities and nationalist press had suggested.

The US applied sanctions following widespread claims the Chinese government was suppressing Xinjiang's Uyghur Muslim population. Many have accused China of human rights violations that include forced labor, internment camps and constant surveillance. China has long denied the allegations. Intel may have played a role in those violations, as its chips were used in both a spying-oriented supercomputing center and in surveillance systems police obtained despite a blocklist preventing access to US tech. Intel said it wasn't aware China was misusing its hardware.

The uproar underscores the juggling act Intel, Apple and other American tech firms maintain when operating in China. They have to respect US sanctions (as Intel will continue to do here) and frequently want to be seen embracing American notions of civil and human rights, but they also risk losing a major source of revenue if they antagonize a Chinese government eager to silence criticism. Companies have removed features, transferred data storage and otherwise made exceptions to preserve their business in China. Intel won't necessarily be pushed to make a decision after the letter, but it clearly doesn't have much leeway in situations like this.

One of the internet’s most vocal proponents of Bitcoin voiced an unusually uncharacteristic opinion against Web3 this week. On Monday, Square Block CEO Jack Dorsey took to Twitter to warn blockchain enthusiasts how Web3 has already been co-opted by investors. “You don’t own ‘web3,’” he said in a message spotted by Bloomberg. “The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you’re getting into…”

Web3 is the term many in the crypto community use to describe the next iteration of the internet. With the help of technologies like blockchain, they argue the internet will become a more decentralized entity, free of the institutional players that have dominated it since the early days of the platform. Investment firms like Andreessen Horowitz have been some of the most vocal supporters of companies in the space. As of October, the firm had set aside $3.1 billion to invest in crypto and Web3 startups. “It’s somewhere between a and z,” Dorsey said, referencing “a16z,” its nickname when Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined the conversation to ask if “anyone has seen web3?”

It’s unclear what prompted Dorsey to take to Twitter to say what he did. After all, this is the man who wanted the world to know he had a Bitcoin clock in his kitchen when he testified before Congress. It should also be noted Dorsey runs a company that is heavily involved in blockchain technologies.

What is clear is that his tweet caused a stir. As of the writing of this article, the post has attracted more than 5,000 retweets, 2,000 quote tweets and 31,000 likes. Naturally, the Bored Ape contingent showed up to tell Dorsey he was “dead wrong,” but just as many people came to offer support, calling him “based” for his tweet.

For all the buzz Dorsey’s tweet generated, there’s a kernel of truth to what he said. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal, citing a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, determined 0.01 percent of those who hold Bitcoin control 27 percent of the digital currency. Another recent study from Nature found that just ten percent of NFT investors completed 85 percent of all transactions involving those assets. Decentralization indeed.

LG has unveiled its latest high-end UltraFine OLED 4K monitors aimed at pros and this time it has a smaller version that should be more affordable. On top of that, the new models come with more accessories to make calibration and working in bright rooms easier. 

The 32-inch model appears to be much the same as before, with features like a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, true 10-bit color, 60Hz refresh rate and 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space. As before, it also conforms to the VESA DisplayHDR 400 True Black standard for OLED displays. 

The relative lack of brightness and huge contrast ratio shows the compromises and benefits of an OLED display for content creators, in a nutshell. On the one hand, with 400 nits of brightness the UltraFine OLED is barely adequate for doing HDR color grading compared to much brighter (1,000 nit+) mini-LED displays like Apple's $5,000 Pro Display XDR or the $5,000 ASUS ProArt PA32UCG-K display.

LG/Yi Cheol

On the other, LG's OLED display has much better contrast, perfect blacks and zero blooming because each pixel illuminates individually. That feature can give color professionals a much better idea of the true contrast in an image. So in essence, buyers have to make a tough choice between brightness and contrast, both of which are important for color work these days — particularly with video. 

The new 27-inch model will attract folks who want the benefits of OLED and the other pro features (10-bit color, 99 percent DCI-P3 and a 1,000,0000:1 contrast ratio) at a lower price. Both displays also offer features like a clean professional design, USB-C with 90W power delivery and four USB ports. It also comes a pair of DisplayPort inputs and one HDMI port. LG's doesn't say what kind for the latter, so it's likely not HDMI 2.1 — though that's not crucial for content creation pros. 

The biggest upgrade over last year is that both monitors include a color calibration sensor (LG didn't say which one), along with its LG Calibration Studio software. They also come with a monitor hood so you can better control the image depending on room lighting. LG hasn't released the pricing yet, but its current 32-inch UltraFine Display OLED Pro Monitor costs a cool $4,000, so expect to see a similar price on the new model. The 27-inch version, meanwhile, will likely be north of $2K.

The wait is over. Following an announcement at WWDC 2021, Apple has released Swift Playgrounds 4.0. The update is a significant one for the app, which both kids and adults can use to learn the company’s Swift programming language. For the first time, the software allows you to build both iPhone and iPad apps directly on your iPad. You can now also use your tablet to upload your creations to the App Store.

Additionally, Swift Playgrounds 4.0 comes with a host of quality-of-life enhancements. For instance, you can preview changes to your app as you make them in real-time. And speaking of previews, you can now see how they look in full-screen mode. Apple has also added inline suggestions to help users write code quickly and accurately. The project search feature is more robust too since it can now find results across multiple files. Rounding out the list of improvements is a feature for moving your projects between Playgrounds and Xcode and back again.

All told, the update looks well-worth checking out. Once you’ve installed iPadOS 15.2 on your tablet, head to the App Store to download Swift Playground 4.0.

Meta is expanding its bug bounty program to reward researchers who report data scraping. The change will allow researchers to report both bugs that could enable scraping activity, as well as previously scraped data that has already been published online.

In a blog post, Meta says it believes it is the first to launch a bug bounty program to specifically target scraping activity. “We're looking to find vulnerabilities that enable attackers to bypass scraping limitations to access data at greater scale than what we initially intended,” Security Engineering Manager Dan Gurfinkle told reports during a briefing.

Data scraping is different than other “malicious” activity Meta tracks as it uses automated tools to mass-collect personal information from users’ profiles, such as email addresses, phone numbers, profile photos and other details. Even though users often willingly share this information on their public Facebook profiles, scrapers can expose these details more widely, such as publishing the information in searchable databases.

It can also be difficult for Meta to combat this activity. For example, in April the personal information of more than 500 million Facebook users was published on a forum. In that case, the actual data scraping had occurred years prior, and the company had already addressed the underlying flaw. But there was little it could do once the data started circulating online. In some cases, the company has alsosued individuals for data scraping.

Under the new bug bounty program, researchers will be rewarded for finding “unprotected or openly public databases containing at least 100,000 unique Facebook user records with PII [personally identifiable information] or sensitive data (e.g. email, phone number, physical address, religious or political affiliation).” Instead of its usual payouts though, Meta says it will donate to a charity chosen by the researcher in order not to incentivize the publishing of scraped data.

For reports of bugs that can lead to data scraping, researchers can choose between a donation or a direct payout. Meta says each bug or dataset is eligible for at least a $500 award.

You or your kids might now have a good reason to try Apple's SharePlay feature. Disney+ has released an update that adds SharePlay group viewing to its iPhone, iPad and Apple TV apps, letting up to 32 people watch and chat together. This will help you discover the latest plot twists in Boba Fett or Hawkeye, of course, but it could also be helpful for young ones who want rewatch Frozen with their distant friends.

Before you ask: everyone in the call needs Disney+ to stream, and this only works if a given title is available to everyone in your virtual gathering. You can still choose audio and subtitles separately from everyone else — the group only shares the image and playback controls. Apple TV users can also watch on the big screen while using their iPhone or iPad to stay in touch.

The launch conveniently dovetails with a flurry of Disney+ show and movie releases. It's still a welcome addition, though, and it might be particularly useful during a holiday season when the pandemic still poses challenges for some in-person family gatherings.

In September, Bungie, attempting to distance itself from former publisher Activision, announced a series of reforms designed to foster increased diversity and inclusion. CEO Pete Parsons said his hope was the studio’s efforts would set an example for the wider gaming industry. At the time, it appeared the announcement was a proactive move by Bungie, but now it seems the studio was responding to some of its own inner turmoil.

In response to a story from IGN reporting on years of systematic sexism and workplace harassment at the studio, Parsons has published an apology letter. “I am not here to refute or to challenge the experiences we're seeing shared today by people who have graced our studio with their time and talent,” he says. “Our actions or, in some cases, inactions, caused these people pain. I apologize personally and on behalf of everyone at Bungie who I know feels a deep sense of empathy and sadness reading through these accounts.”

He says over the last several years Bungie has made “significant” changes to foster a better workplace. At the top of that list, he notes the studio has removed “bad actors” irrespective of their “tenure, seniority or interpersonal relationships.”

That’s not something it appears was true of Bungie in the past. In one section of the report, IGN recounts the story of a Destiny narrative lead who threw a chair at a window because “he felt others were ruining his creative vision of the game.” That individual reportedly stayed at the company for several years after that incident until he left and was later hired to do contract work for Destiny 2. The report also notes many employees wrote letters to Parsons begging for him to intervene in a variety of workplace issues. He reportedly never responded to those pleas.

As things stand today, Parsons says he believes employees whose behavior warranted removal were either fired or they no longer work at Bungie. If new information comes to light, Parsons pledged Bungie would investigate those reports “with integrity.”

After reiterating the studio’s commitment to the reforms it announced in September, Parson’s letter turns to Bungie’s recent hiring efforts. Over the past five years, he says the number of employees who identify as women or as someone from an underrepresented community has increased to 20.5 percent and 18.6 percent, respectively. In 2021, 31 and 23 percent of the studio’s hires were employees who identified as part of those two groups. What he doesn’t mention is where those numbers were previously. Without historical data, it’s impossible to know how much better Bungie has become at hiring more diverse candidates.

While the sexual harassment scandal at Activision Blizzard has dominated headlines in recent months, today’s IGN report underscores that there are toxic workplaces across the gaming industry. Harassment and management protecting abusers: these are issues that keep coming up year after year. They're not exclusive to one company because many of them have been built in the same way, and it will take a concerted effort to undo those cultures.