It was at CES 2024, in a Las Vegas ballroom with a carpet so static I was getting an electric shock every few minutes, that I finally saw one of my longest-held dreams come true. You see, I own a Concept2 Model D rowing machine, hands down the best rowing machine on the market. But the company has always refused to build a display that doesn’t look like it comes from the early ‘80s. When the PM5 was launched, it looked dated, but in a world where Hydrow and Peloton can offer gorgeous touchscreen displays and live classes, it looked ancient. Which is why I’m so elated that I stumbled across Myrow and its 22-inch retrofit display for Concept2’s rowing machines.
The tablet attaches onto Concept2’s existing monitor stand by unscrewing a couple of bolts without damaging the existing hardware. You’ll still need the PM5, since Myrow connects to that to pull your rowing data, but it can sit flat in its storage position beside the fan. Then, you’ll be able to access on-demand rowing classes, custom workouts and, because everyone who has seen the product has asked, streaming video. This is more or less why I’ve tried any number of annoying third-party mounts to put some sort of video solution onto my rower. After all, the best motivator (for me) is to turn movie-watching time into a workout.
As well as the video classes, you’ll get better visualisation of your rowing data which is another frustrating experience with the PM5. You’ll even be able to share your data to Logbook automatically which, normally, can be frustrating experience.
Myrow is the brainchild of Gary Simpson, the founder of Transit Wireless which brings wireless signal to subway systems. He said he was opting wether to ride on his Peloton or row on his Concept2 during the period everyone was sheltering in place. And that the lack of live classes, or any added-value features, meant he defaulted to the bike far more than he liked. So, he decided to look and see if there were any available products out there and, when he didn’t find any, opted to build his own.
Myrow hopes to open pre-orders at some point in February with shipping expected to begin in April. It’ll cost $499 for the tablet and mount, with an additional $30 a month subscription to get the on-demand classes and everything else.
We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/someone-made-a-peloton-esque-display-for-the-worlds-most-ubiquitous-rowing-machine-031001362.html?src=rss
Samsung’s CES 2024 TV rollout is here. The company typically reserves finer product details (including pricing) for later, but it provided Engadget with a quick rundown of its new television lineup ahead of its press conference on Monday. Its new 8K TVs have new AI-powered features, including upscaling technology (to help with the scarcity of native 8K content), and it claims a “glare-free” OLED model looks equally clear in bright and dark rooms.
Samsung’s new quantum dot TVs have AI-powered upscaling tech the company hopes will nudge curious consumers into paying a premium for an 8K TV. With most content providers currently lacking native 8K streaming options, Samsung’s AI Upscaling Pro feature in its QN900D (65- to 85-inch) television can help by converting 4K content into 8K or HD / SD media into 4K.
The company says the QN900D is the “slimmest, most premium 8K TV to ever hit the market.” In addition to resolution upscaling, the television includes a trick to recognize when you’re watching sports and help track the game’s ball on the screen. Another algorithmic feature, Real Depth Enhancer Pro, helps boost contrast between the foreground and background, including in fast-paced content like car racing.
Samsung’s new QLED (8K and 4K) and OLED televisions also include Active Voice Amplifier Pro, a more advanced version of an existing feature that can boost dialog and “key sound effects” for more immersive audio. In addition, AI Customization Mode asks you to choose your “preferred picture” in a series of scenes when setting up the television; it will then use AI to detect the scene you’re watching and optimize the picture accordingly based on your preferences.
The company is also launching a (presumably cheaper) 8K QLED TV, the QN85D, that lacks the fancy AI conversion features. Meanwhile, the company’s 4K NEO QLED lineup includes the QN90D (43- to 98-inch) and QN85D (55- to 85-inch).
Samsung
Samsung also has new OLED models for 2024, including the S90D and S95D (both 55- to 77-inch). The latter includes the company’s “OLED Glare Free” tech, which it claims will let you “enjoy the best possible viewing experience across both bright and dark rooms.” Samsung says the feature doesn’t affect the picture’s viewing angles or contrast and can depict Pantone-validated standard colors. The S95D has a 4K 144Hz panel, and it measures just under 11mm thick.
The company’s 2024 offerings also include “more ultra-large screen options than ever,” including 98-inch models in its Neo QLED 8K and 4K, QLED 4K and Crystal UHD lineups. Yet another AI-powered feature will address the problem of pixels becoming more discernible as screen size increases. Samsung’s Supersize Picture Enhancer feature uses AI upscaling to enhance the perceived sharpness and reduce visible noise on each pixel to help offset the bigger TVs’ larger dots.
Engadget is on the floor at CES 2024 and will check out the hardware and software-based features in Samsung’s new televisions. You can also tune into the company’s press conference on Monday at 5PM ET.
We're reporting live from CES 2024 in Las Vegas from January 6-12. Keep up with all the latest news from the show here.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/samsungs-2024-tv-lineup-at-ces-2024-includes-ai-aplenty-and-a-glare-free-oled-model-030046720.html?src=rss
While Apple’s Vision Pro mixed reality headset is expected to arrive as soon as next month, the company itself has yet to confirm a release date. But, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, there may be an official Vision Pro announcement within “the next week or so” — conveniently timed to coincide with CES, which Apple always sits out. The headset has already begun shipping to US warehouses on a small scale, Gurman said.
In the Power On newsletter, Gurman dug into the latest developments that suggest Apple will release the Vision Pro in February, as he recently predicted. Following up on his previous report that small groups of employees are being sent to headquarters for training on a new product, Gurman now reports that a three-hour meeting has been scheduled for all employees at Apple stores across the US on January 21, with training sessions and the arrival of new inventory racks planned throughout the week after.
All the pieces seem to be lining up for what Gurman predicts is an “imminent rollout” in the US. Other regions, including China, Canada and the UK may be the next in line after that.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-may-drop-some-vision-pro-news-in-the-next-week-ahead-of-its-imminent-release-175100795.html?src=rss
Whether or not you’ve actively been using Threads, you may have noticed — thanks to its integration into the Instagram feed — an off-putting shift in the kinds of posts the platform has been recommending over the last few weeks. At best, you might be seeing tons of content that is of no interest to you whatsoever, or copypasta-style engagement bait. At worst? A whole lot of hate speech. In a short video shared on Friday responding to an Ask Me Anything question, Instagram head Adam Mosseri apologized for the “low-quality recommendations” proliferating on Threads and said the team is working on a fix.
“We want people to have a positive experience on Threads, and we’ve actually had some issues over the last few weeks with low-quality recommendations,” Mosseri said, “things that don’t quite violate our Community Guidelines — which is where we take content down entirely — but kind of go right up to that line. We’re working on improving it. A lot of it should be fixed at this point.” He goes on to say that while “there’s a lot more work to do,” users can “expect it to get much better over the next few weeks. Again, apologies.”
While Threads already felt cluttered with posts meant to milk engagement as new users try to generate followings on the budding social site, things have taken a palpably darker turn recently. Suddenly, ragebait seems to be front and center. Users have complained that they’re being suggested an alarming amount of hateful content, particularly posts that are outright transphobic. It’s crept into my own feeds, enough so that it feels like I’ve muted more accounts in the last two or so weeks than I previously had in six months on Threads.
Engadget asked Meta for clarification on whether the improvements Mosseri mentioned will specifically address transphobia and other forms of hate speech. In response, a spokesperson reiterated Mosseri’s comments and said, “In addition to removing content that violates our community guidelines, we're aware that some users are seeing this type of repetitive, low-quality content they may not be interested in, and we're taking steps to address it.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-head-adam-mosseri-says-sorry-for-all-those-trashy-threads-recommendations-193001655.html?src=rss
Google Bard Advanced is coming, and it may represent the company's first attempt to charge for an AI chatbot. The code on Bard's website shows the opportunity to get three months free of Bard Advanced — implying that it will be at a cost after that. X (formerly Twitter) user Bedros Pamboukian shared the discovered code, which also includes a defunct Google One link. This could mean that users will be required to get a Google One subscription to access Bard Advanced.
hi, bard advanced will be free for 3 months and you'll need Google One too, enjoysies
the fact that it's in prod implies it's ready & being tested (currently an experiment)
again, not a leaker, but Google keeps putting stuff in plain sight and literally nobody realizes... pic.twitter.com/YqfAK77f0F
Google first announced Bard Advanced in December 2023 alongside the new AI large language model Gemini and an AI hypercomputer from Google Cloud. Gemini is Google's most capable model to date, with the ability to "seamlessly understand and reason about all kinds of inputs from the ground up, far better than existing multimodal models," Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained in a blog post. Gemini has three sizes: Gemini Ultra, Gemini Nano and Gemini Pro, with Bard using the latter. Gemini Ultra isn't publicly available yet, but Google has stated that it will be the force behind Bard Advanced.
As for Bard Advanced's availability, the aforementioned code suggests it could be tied to Google One (although it's unclear what subscription tier would be required) but no details have been confirmed at this time. Google is currently testing its capabilities with a small group (which also might be why the code is visible). There's no exact release date for Bard Advanced yet, but Google said in December that it would be available "early next year" so it could launch at any time.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/google-bard-advanced-is-coming-but-it-likely-wont-be-free-142653282.html?src=rss
New Year’s resolutions are usually set with the best intentions – I may have already failed at one of mine already — but the right tools (and resolution, if I’m honest) can make achieving those goals easier.
Naturally, with all the wearables and smartwatches around, there’s a fitness theme to half of our guide, but smartwatches can help nudge you into better habits and even remind you to meditate, which is something I’ve set up on my Apple Watch this week.
We’ve also got to-do list app recommendations, cable organizing advice (that is a weak-ass New Year resolution) and help on how to cultivate a new reading habit in 2024.
What are your resolutions for the coming year? And what will you do (or buy) to achieve them?
– Mat Smith
You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
Wireless TV, plug-and-play solar and next-gen headphones.
The Engadget team is prepping itself for another tour (in military terms) of Las Vegas. CES is back again. Alongside the glory of huge TVs in every size, new autonomous car tech and weird robots that will never make it outside of tech trade shows, we’ve compiled a few predictions for all the tech companies and startups planning to attend. We’ve got next-gen headphones, new display technology and more.
The show officially runs from January 9 - 12, though we'll be on the ground well before that. The first CES-related events will kick off on January 7, so get ready!
LG’s latest 4K projector looks a little like, well, I’ll say it: an objet d’arte from TJ Maxx. I say that from a place of love: I’d love a projector that looks like this. I mean, it has a handle that looks like a crank! The style does betray the high-tech insides. The CineBeam Qube can blast 4K images that measure up to 120 inches, with an RGB laser light source, a 450,000:1 contrast ratio and 154 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
The price has dropped permanently to $249 following the launch of the Quest 3.
Meta is permanently cutting the price of its Quest 2 VR headset to $250 following the launch of the Quest 3, according to Meta’s official Quest blog. The Quest 2 has been on sale at that price since Black Friday anyway, but a new official retail price might spell even better deals for the previous-gen model in the next few months.
NASA’s robotic Mars explorers were given some time off, as a natural phenomenon would likely interfere with communications. Leading up to the pause, the Curiosity rover was put in park — but its Hazard-Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) kept snapping away. By the end of the period, Curiosity recorded the passage of a Martian day over 12 hours from its stationary position, as the sun moved from dawn to dusk.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-tech-to-help-you-stick-to-your-new-years-resolutions-121518467.html?src=rss
New Year’s resolutions are usually set with the best intentions – I may have already failed at one of mine already — but the right tools (and resolution, if I’m honest) can make achieving those goals easier.
Naturally, with all the wearables and smartwatches around, there’s a fitness theme to half of our guide, but smartwatches can help nudge you into better habits and even remind you to meditate, which is something I’ve set up on my Apple Watch this week.
We’ve also got to-do list app recommendations, cable organizing advice (that is a weak-ass New Year resolution) and help on how to cultivate a new reading habit in 2024.
What are your resolutions for the coming year? And what will you do (or buy) to achieve them?
– Mat Smith
You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!
Wireless TV, plug-and-play solar and next-gen headphones.
The Engadget team is prepping itself for another tour (in military terms) of Las Vegas. CES is back again. Alongside the glory of huge TVs in every size, new autonomous car tech and weird robots that will never make it outside of tech trade shows, we’ve compiled a few predictions for all the tech companies and startups planning to attend. We’ve got next-gen headphones, new display technology and more.
The show officially runs from January 9 - 12, though we'll be on the ground well before that. The first CES-related events will kick off on January 7, so get ready!
LG’s latest 4K projector looks a little like, well, I’ll say it: an objet d’arte from TJ Maxx. I say that from a place of love: I’d love a projector that looks like this. I mean, it has a handle that looks like a crank! The style does betray the high-tech insides. The CineBeam Qube can blast 4K images that measure up to 120 inches, with an RGB laser light source, a 450,000:1 contrast ratio and 154 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut.
The price has dropped permanently to $249 following the launch of the Quest 3.
Meta is permanently cutting the price of its Quest 2 VR headset to $250 following the launch of the Quest 3, according to Meta’s official Quest blog. The Quest 2 has been on sale at that price since Black Friday anyway, but a new official retail price might spell even better deals for the previous-gen model in the next few months.
NASA’s robotic Mars explorers were given some time off, as a natural phenomenon would likely interfere with communications. Leading up to the pause, the Curiosity rover was put in park — but its Hazard-Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) kept snapping away. By the end of the period, Curiosity recorded the passage of a Martian day over 12 hours from its stationary position, as the sun moved from dawn to dusk.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-tech-to-help-stick-to-your-new-years-resolutions-121518831.html?src=rss
NVIDIA may have figured out a way to go around the US export restrictions on China, but apparently ASML, the Dutch firm behind the key chipmaking equipment, isn't having much say on this end. According to Bloomberg, Biden's administration reportedly reached out to ASML "weeks before" the January 1, 2024 export ban deadline, requesting the firm to halt some pre-scheduled shipments of its deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) machines to its Chinese customers. This came after the revelation that SMIC used ASML tech to manufacture Huawei's latest flagship processor, the 7nm HiSilicon Kirin 9000S.
In addition to DUV machines, ASML also manufactures extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines for making more advanced chips — with node processes of 5nm or less — for the likes of Apple and Qualcomm. While ASML was never allowed to sell EUV equipment to China, the Dutch government did grant licenses to the firm for shipping DUV machines to China until the end of 2023.
Bloomberg reports that things changed when the US government — National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, specifically — allegedly contacted the Dutch government regarding some of ASML's final shipments to China, to which his team was asked to reach out to ASML directly. "Shipments of a limited number of machines" were affected.
While China had been able to source lithography machines from elsewhere, they tended to be off less advanced methods. Not to mention the joint effort between the US, Japan and the Netherlands on limiting China's access to such equipment. That said, China had since been pushed to beef up its own silicon ecosystem, to the point where it surprised the world with its homegrown 7nm mobile 5G chip. It's no wonder the US was desperate to halt ASML's final DUV shipments to China, though doing so before the agreed deadline may be a questionable move.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/us-reportedly-halted-asmls-chipmaking-machine-shipments-to-china-weeks-before-ban-075407978.html?src=rss
What do you do when the tech world mostly grinds to a halt at the end of December? You reheat your hot takes, force a narrative thread on a company's ups and downs and edit it all up for consumption.
Yes, it's a little quiet at the end of the year (barring Apple Watch bans), but that won't stop TMA from finding something for me to talk to himself about. We’re looking at a few of the major stories from the last 12 months and .. some other things where I just has to say my piece. And if not on a short YouTube video that's clipped, cropped and pushed into socials, then where? On X? Pschh.
I couldn't cover all the big things in tech in one tiny video. I'd recommend taking a look at all of the big tech wins in 2023 (and all the big losses), and it's definitely worth reading through our picks of the best games of the year.
Like email more than video? Subscribe right here for daily reports, direct to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-the-biggest-tech-stories-of-2023-140022006.html?src=rss
The last few years have been, to put it mildly, rough. And 2023 continued to bring sad tidings. Amid the humanitarian crisis that is the Palestine-Israeli conflict, plus increased fears around the credibility and reliability of AI and Elon Musk’s ongoing meltdown, tech’s biggest players also suffered their fair share of losses. This year, we saw the demise of the E3 gaming convention, the deterioration of popular online forums and the decline of cryptocurrencies, Silicon Valley banks and financial institutions. Not to mention the poor neighbors of the Twitter office in San Francisco who had to endure obnoxious, potentially epilepsy-triggering lights flashing from the building. While we can happily say “good riddance” to many of these things, it is with some sadness that we bid farewell and condolences to some of this year’s worst developments.
The X, Twitter and Elon Musk fiasco
No “Losers in 2023” list is complete without mentioning the fiasco that is Elon Musk’s Twitter (or X). Last year, shortly after Musk acquired Twitter, some of us were asked to make predictions about how Musk’s new venture would fare. I felt that it was a high-risk, high-reward move that might work due to Musk’s combination of luck and smarts, based mainly on his previous success heading up Tesla and SpaceX.
However, I also said that Twitter might devolve into the most chaotic social media platform around, which is pretty much what happened. In hindsight, what I failed to account for was that unlike Tesla and SpaceX, Musk doesn’t seem to give a crap about running X like a business and has treated the company more as an expensive toy meant to call attention to the sins (at least in his mind) of social media. And when you combine his increasingly unhinged personality with shortsighted decisions, what you get is an organization in turmoil. So while not all of these things occurred in 2023, here are just a few of the dumbest things that Musk and X have done in the last 18 months.
A little over a year ago, Musk blew up Twitter’s verification system, which promptly led to fake accounts sporting seemingly legit handles doing things like posting an image of Mario flipping the bird, the pope spreading conspiracy theories and more. Then earlier this year in June, Musk decided to block users who weren’t logged in from seeing tweets, which caused Google and others to remove Twitter content from search results. That’s not a very smart move for a company that relies heavily on traffic to generate ad revenue, so it wasn’t a big surprise when Musk backtracked a week later.
But perhaps Musk’s biggest blunder was changing Twitter’s name to X in July, a move so silly that most people continue to pretend like the rebranding never happened. Oh and let’s not forget that the name change was commemorated with a sign that was mounted on the company’s HQ in San Francisco that blinded its neighbors and didn’t have proper permits, resulting in an installation that lasted barely more than a weekend. More recently, citing a rise in hate speech, major companies including Apple and Disney decided to pull ads from X, which later prompted Musk to tell Disney CEO Bob Iger to “Go fuck yourself.” Another clearly wise business move made by a very grounded individual. (That’s sarcasm, in case it’s not clear.)
At this point, it’s hard to imagine how much worse X can get, but given everything that’s happened in 2023, it’s plain that the company formerly known as Twitter hasn’t even hit rock bottom yet. — Sam Rutherford, Senior reporter
David Imel for Engadget
Microsoft’s Surface tablet
No offense to the Surface Laptop Studio 2, which is a mighty powerful and uniquely convertible laptop, but this year felt like a low point for Microsoft’s iconic Surface tablets. The Surface Pro 9 hasn’t been upgraded at all since last, so it’s still running either an older 12th-gen Intel chip. There is a 5G-equipped model with a custom ARM-based Microsoft SQ3 chip, but we recommend staying far far away from that thing. And beyond the Laptop Studio 2, we only got the Surface Laptop Go 3 for consumers(the tiny Surface Go 4 tablet is now firmly targeted as business users, it doesn’t even show up on the main Surface site).
It almost seems like Microsoft’s dream of creating a true tablet/laptop hybrid is dead – or at the very least, it’s on pause as the company focuses on shoving its AI Copilot into all of its products. Let’s face it: While the Surface business has earned a bit of money for Microsoft, it’s a pittance compared to what the company sees from its Azure cloud revenue. Instead, the Surface devices proved that Microsoft could produce high-end Windows hardware that occasionally pushed the PC industry forward.
It’s been 11 years since Microsoft announced its first Surface devices, but it turns out most consumers didn’t want to replace their laptops with tablets. Simpler 2-in-1 convertible devices, like HP’s Spectre x360 16, are far less common these days (and notably, they also work best in their notebook modes). And it doesn’t help that Windows 11 is still far from tablet friendly. If you really want to get work done on a slate, it simply makes more sense to get an iPad and a keyboard case instead.
With Microsoft’s Surface visionary, Panos Panay, now at Amazon, there doesn’t seem to be much hope left for the company’s tablet concept. But who knows, maybe the Surface Neo will finally make a return as a true foldable some day. (Remember the Surface Duo, another failure?) A Windows user can only dream. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior reporter
Amazon
Amazon’s Halo hardware products
Speaking of dreams, mine were dashed by Amazon in July this year when the company pulled support for its Halo line of health-related hardware products. In fact, my sleep itself might have been affected, since I had just gotten used to checking my Halo app each morning to see the amount of rest I got the night before.
Amazon’s Halo division has been plagued with controversy since it launched the screenless Halo wearable in 2020. The device was a barebones activity tracker, but stood out for an opt-in feature that used onboard mics to listen to you speaking and tell if you sound stressed, upbeat or emotional. This caught a lot of attention, with people saying this was akin to Amazon trying to police your way of speaking. Many other reviewers, myself included, were more critical of the fact that, though the Tone feature did flag times when wearers sounded happy or sad, it did not present enough information for that data to be useful.
The Halo app also offered a way for you to use your phone’s camera for a body composition scan. You’d have to enter your height and weight, before stripping down to your underwear and posing for four pictures, showing your front, back and sides. The app would then tell you how much of your body is fat or muscle.
If it sounds dubious, it’s probably because it is. Though Amazon said its “Halo body fat measurement is as accurate as methods a doctor would use—and nearly twice as accurate as leading at-home smart scales.” Spoiler: It wasn’t. I used the Body feature every few months for about two years, comparing it to the bio-electrical impedance analysis (BIA) sensor on Samsung’s Galaxy Watch when that became available. Over time, as my body composition changed, I also got BIA scans at the F45 gym I go to, which uses a more sophisticated machine. Amazon’s scans were wildly off, while the Samsung watch came closer to the data gleaned from the machine at my gym.
Photo by: Cherlynn Low / Engadget
All that is to say that Amazon’s Halo products haven’t been great. But that seemed to start to change when the company launched the Halo Rise bedside sleep tracker this year. I loved it for the way it accurately detected when I fell asleep, calculated the different stages I was in (REM, Deep, Light etc) and more importantly how it did all that without requiring me to wear something to bed or install a new mattress. I finally had a feasible way to track my sleep and use that to figure out how hard or easy I should take each day’s workout, along with other activities and stresses.
Alas, that joy was short-lived. Despite Amazon acquiring healthcare companies and clearly investing more into becoming a pharmaceutical provider, it gave up on the Halo business this year. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, since one good product doesn’t an entire profitable endeavor make. Amazon not having access to my sleep, heart rate, steps and tone is probably for the best, as we contemplate a future where the online shopping giant is also our doctor and pharmacist. — Cherlynn Low, Deputy editor
E3
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been reading and talking about games, but the internet expanded my horizons beyond the confines of the UK magazine industry. In the late ‘90s, at age 13, I started writing (very badly) for a popular game site, covering release dates, special editions and other unimportant things.
Within a couple of years I’d lost interest in writing, but I still hung out in the same IRC channels talking about games with likeminded people. IRC started my obsession with E3 and the Tokyo Game Show; weeks where I’d talk about these huge events with a weird milieu of fans and industry professionals.
In 2000, the fever around Metal Gear Solid 2’s E3 debut was out of this world. The first-person reports from the show were unbelievably positive. When the trailer finally became available to download a few weeks later, it quickly spread across the internet. I can still remember the mix of frustration and excitement as I downloaded it from an IRC bot at 7KB a second to finally get a glimpse of “next-gen” gaming.
MGS2 was peak E3 for me, and in hindsight it was also the moment E3 began to die: Why did I need to read a 1,000-word breakdown of a trailer when I could just download and watch it myself? Why should Konami spend big money on a booth when it could just release a trailer directly to its potential customers?
Back then, I was the only person I knew IRL who was “extremely online.” Now, everyone is. By the 2010s, when I started to attend E3 myself, the role of press and the show had shifted. Nintendo E3 Directs were in full swing, and the big shows from Sony, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft and EA were all beamed live to fans. Sure, I got to play some games and interview some developers, but that’s something that happens throughout the year now.
E3 remained one of the highlights of my calendar, and there were always some memorable moments — the PS4 and Xbox One reveals were probably the highlight of my in-person years — but by 2019, my excitement was more tied to seeing farflung colleagues and old industry friends than it was the event itself. When the pandemic canceled the 2020 event, it was obviously it would never recover. We’d written about how the industry didn’t need E3 years before.
Summer Game Fest will happen again next year. It will never hit the scale of the show it’s replacing, but I hope that it becomes a strong enough brand to keep the idea of E3 going. There’s still something exciting for fans, and journalists, about a week of gaming announcements to predict and dissect. If more companies spread their events throughout the year, that last bit of E3 magic will be gone. — Aaron Souppouris, Executive Editor
Cryptocurrencies and finance in tech
Much as we pretend mathematics represents an immutable truth, we must remember it’s not without its loopholes. Centuries from now, historians researching crypto may assume humanity forgot that as it decided to substitute math for truth in its entirety. That the prodigies of this world sought to engineer out human fallibility between League of Legends sessions. Uncertain, wooly and hard-to-quantify concepts like “truth” and “trust” would be tossed out in favor of the certainty of pure math. That’s the PR line: The Bitcoin white paper describes the virtual currency as a “system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust.” It’s ironic, then, that so many high-profile people who hitched their mast to crypto are either in prison, or are awaiting trial for fraud.
Those same historians may wonder if crypto was merely a vehicle ripe for hijack by unethical types, or if its inherent fraudiness was written into its DNA. 2023 will offer plenty of material to scrub through given the number of figures who wound up face-to-face with law enforcement. Coinbase started the year accused of leaving gaps in its systems big enough to enable fraud, money laundering and drug dealing. Former Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky was sued and later arrested — alongside the company’s chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon. Not long after, Terraform Labs was charged by the SEC for securities fraud after it wiped out $45 billion or so. Bear in mind, this is a year-in-review story, and I’ve only managed to make it as far as February.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, dominated headlines this year much as FTX had in 2022. Regulators accused it, and its founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao of deliberately undermining its own controls and processes to not-so tacitly enable users to break the law. Zhou would plead guilty, step down as CEO and pay a hefty fine which enabled the company to keep running. Oh, and we should mention the Winklevoss Twins, their exchange and its partners, who were accused of defrauding investors to the tune of $1 billion. Ironic then, that Ferrari finally decided to try to appeal to the Lambo-and-Tendies demographic by opening up crypto purchases for its cars just as things started to get tough.
Of course, the real loser in all of this has to be Michael Lewis who, with an MA in Economics and experience as a bond trader for Salomon Brothers in one hand, and a ringside seat with Sam Bankman-Fried in the other, managed to miss what was going on at FTX. Lewis has doubled down in support of his latest muse but now that SBF has been found guilty of fraud, it looks like his reputation as the most credible financial journalist of the age is in tatters. — Daniel Cooper, Senior reporter
STRF/STAR MAX/IPx
Reddit
I've been a longtime Reddit lurker, occasional poster and always a first-party app user. But when the drama about the company's decision to start charging for API access started to unfold in April, my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of third-party Reddit clients. Too bad, though, that the company proceeded to then botch it all.
Because API access was no longer free, many apps like Apollo, RIF, BaconReader and Narwhal had to reconsider their pricing or shut down altogether. Reddit’s policy change didn’t just challenge these apps, which mostly offered superior browsing experiences to the company’s own. It also created problems for clients that were built for more accessible use, rendering them unusable unless their developers ponied up the fees, which could go up as much as tens of thousands of dollars (or, in Apollo’s case, an estimated $20 million a year).
While Reddit did eventually seem to concede that the API fees would shut out some users with disabilities and ended up working with some unnamed developers to give them free access, the company dug in its heels in the wake of public outrage and subreddit blackouts. In the second half of the year, subreddits all over the platform either stopped posting, changed their settings to private or NSFW or dedicated themselves to only putting up salacious images of Last Week Tonight host John Oliver.
Reddit didn’t just ignore the protests and carry on with its planned fees. It went as far as to forcibly take over some communities that went dark, while looking for volunteers to take over certain subreddits that it deemed to have violated its Moderator Code of Conduct.
According to internet analytics company Similarweb in June, Reddit saw a 6.6 percent drop in average daily traffic. We don’t have the latest statistics on how the company is doing now, but I can tell you from personal experience that the first-party app on iOS is a complete shitshow. Like many other Redditors have pointed out before, videos will autoplay unmuted out of nowhere for no reason, while I’ve encountered numerous infuriating bugs, including one where a video on a post was repeatedly going on and off mute while I was also trying to stream Spotify to a speaker. It just sucks.
After the mass subreddit blackouts spawned a bunch of duplicate communities with different moderators, the quality of posts have noticeably fallen, as well. Not to mention the company got rid of trophies and then attempted to bring them back again in a confusing format. Throw in the fact that the community now seems to be a mix of karma-farming bots and commenters who copy and paste the same jokes over and over again, the days of enjoyable Reddit scrolling seem to have come to an end in 2023. — Cherlynn Low
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/techs-biggest-losers-in-2023-170017317.html?src=rss
