Space agencies and private companies around the world have been scheduling their own lunar missions over the next few years, and that could be quite complicated to coordinate when they all use different time zones. During a meeting at the European Space Agency's ESTEC technology center in the Netherlands last year, space organizations discussed the "importance and urgency of defining a common lunar reference time."

In a new announcement, ESA navigation system engineer Pietro Giordano said a "joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this." There are a few challenges: They will have to decide whether to keep lunar time synchronized with Earth's or not because clocks on the Moon run faster based on the satellite's position. Each day on the Moon is, in Earth terms, 29.5 days long.

– 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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Jack Dorsey launches his Twitter alternative, Bluesky

It’s out now in closed beta.

Jack Dorsey’s new Twitter alternative, Bluesky, is available in closed beta on the App Store. The invite-only app joins the list of Twitter substitutes, including Mastodon, as Twitter clings on through staff attrition and precarious stability. Bluesky began in 2019 as a Twitter-funded side project. Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter and was still CEO when the initiative started, saw it as a more open alternative to an increasingly centralized Twitter. Then, Bluesky spun off as its own company in 2021.

You’ll have to enter your email address to join the waitlist. The Bluesky app reportedly borrows heavily from Twitter. However, it includes minor differences like “What’s up?” in place of “What’s happening?” along with a simplified process of creating a post (which can also include photos) by selecting a plus button. So… yeah. It’s all pretty Twitter-esque.

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Sony 2023 Bravia XR TVs hands-on

Bigger, brighter and even more better looking.

Engadget

One major company was missing from this year’s CES barrage of TVs: Sony. Now it’s finally ready to show off its latest flagship sets. Its 2023 line of Bravia XR TVs are all powered by the company’s Cognitive Processor XR, so they all include support for stuff like Sony’s XR Clear Image tech, which allows for adaptive noise reduction, auto HDR tone mapping and more. Sony is also trying to take as much of the guesswork out of setup as possible by making its TVs in the standard video or cinematic modes look great right out of the box. Read on for the full round-up of both the LED and OLED families.

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Meta apparently plans to launch its first true AR glasses in 2027

The company reportedly shared its AR/VR roadmap with employees.

Meta has shared its latest augmented and virtual reality hardware roadmap with employees, and according to The Verge, it's planning to launch its first full-fledged AR glasses in 2027. While the company intends to release other AR glasses before then, the device it's launching in four years is the same one Mark Zuckerberg believes could become Meta's "iPhone moment." The glasses, which will reportedly project avatars as high-quality holograms superimposed on the real world, are expected to be quite expensive.

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Airbnb is banning people ‘likely to travel’ with prohibited users

The company’s policies lean heavily on the side of homeowners.

Airbnb is banning users who may be associated with people the company deems a safety risk. Although the short-term rental company faces an impossible balancing act of making owners feel secure without discriminating unfairly against renters, its appeals process – a critical step in catching overreaches – appears to err on the side of perceived homeowner security.

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A lot of users were obsessed with keeping up Snapstreaks after they launched, even maintaining streaks in the hundreds with several friends. They don't seem to be as popular anymore, perhaps in part because life usually gets in the way of sending Snaps to people every single day. Now, Snap has launched an experimental feature that could make it easier to maintain streaks by restoring them if they break. Say, something got in the way of sending Snap to a friend for a day, users can simply tap Restore to pretend that day never happened. 

The catch is that, users will only get one free Snap Restore. As TechCrunch notes, if they want to prevent more Snapstreaks from going to waste, they'd have to buy more Restores from the app for $1 each in the US. In its announcement, the company also said that it's introducing a new way for Snapchat+ subscribers to freeze their Streaks for long periods "soon." While it didn't expound on how the feature will work, Snap said it will allow users to put "things on pause when they know they’re going off the grid."

These feature announcements come shortly after Snap added an OpenAI chatbot similar to ChatGPT to its app. The chatbot shows up as a regular user profile, probably to make it look more like a virtual friend, though Snap admits it could "be tricked into saying just about anything" and has even apologized for its "many deficiencies" in advance. At the moment, the chatbot is exclusively available to Snapchat+ users paying $4 a month for the service, but the company has plans to make it more widely available. 

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E 2, announced several significant changes today. First, it’s launching developer APIs for ChatGPT and the Whisper speech-transcription model. It also changed its terms of service to let developers opt out of using their data for improvements while adding a 30-day data retention policy.

The new ChatGPT API will use the same AI model (“gpt-3.5-turbo”) as the popular chatbot, allowing developers to add either unchanged or flavored versions of ChatGPT to their apps. Snap’s My AI is an early example, along with a new virtual tutor feature for the online study tool Quizlet and an upcoming Ask Instacart tool in the popular local-shopping app. However, the API won’t be limited to brand-specific bots mimicking ChatGPT; it can also power “non-chat” software experiences that could benefit from AI brains.

The ChatGPT API is priced at $0.002 per 1,000 tokens (about 750 words). Additionally, it’s offering a dedicated-capacity option for deep-pocketed developers who expect to use more tokens than the standard API allows. The new developer options join the consumer-facing ChatGPT Plus, a $20-per-month service launched in February.

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Whisper API is a hosted version of the open-source Whisper speech-to-text model it launched in September. “We released a model, but that actually was not enough to cause the whole developer ecosystem to build around it,” OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman toldTechCrunch on Tuesday. “The Whisper API is the same large model that you can get open source, but we’ve optimized to the extreme. It’s much, much faster and extremely convenient.” The transcription API will cost developers $0.006 per minute, enabling “robust” transcription in multiple languages and providing translation to English.

Finally, OpenAI revealed changes to its developer terms based on customer feedback about privacy and security concerns. Unless a developer opts in, the company will no longer use data submitted through the API for “service improvements” to train its AI models. Additionally, it’s adding a 30-day data retention policy while providing stricter retention options “depending on user needs” (likely meaning high-usage companies with budgets to match). Finally, it’s simplifying its terms surrounding data ownership, clarifying that users own the models’ input and output.

The company will also replace its pre-launch review process for developers with a mostly automated system. OpenAI justified the change by pointing out that “the overwhelming majority of apps were approved during the vetting process,” claiming its monitoring has “significantly improved.” “One of our biggest focuses has been figuring out, how do we become super friendly to developers?” Brockman said to TechCrunch. “Our mission is to really build a platform that others are able to build businesses on top of.”

Jack Dorsey’s new Twitter alternative, Bluesky, is now available in closed beta on the App Store. The invite-only app could soon join a crowded field of budding Twitter competitors, including Mastodon.

Interested users can submit their email addresses to join the waitlist. The Bluesky app reportedly borrows heavily from Twitter. However, it includes minor differences like “What’s up?” in place of “What’s happening?” along with a simplified process of creating a post (which can also include photos) by selecting a plus button. Otherwise, it has familiar features like searching for and following users and viewing their posts on a Home timeline.

Bluesky began in 2019 as a Twitter-funded side project. Dorsey, who co-founded Twitter and was still CEO when the initiative started, saw it as a more open alternative to an increasingly centralized Twitter. Then, Bluesky spun off as its own company in 2021. Dorsey has said he believes social media should be free of corporate or government control and that only authors should have the power to remove their social-media content. Additionally, although he said Twitter’s decision to ban Donald Trump after his role in inciting the January 6th insurrection was “the right decision,” he also worried about its precedent in endangering a “free and open global internet.”

Whether Twitter users will flee to Bluesky (or other platforms) in large enough numbers to make a significant difference is an open question. However, considering many people seeking an alternative are doing so because of current CEO / owner Elon Musk’s headline-grabbing embrace of far-right figures and ideology, it may be illogical to expect them to flock to a brainchild of someone who holds reservations about banning anyone for any reason.

Last week, Apple's new M2 Mac mini saw its first discount on Amazon, but now it's dropped even further, with a full $50 off the list price at B&H Photo. The discount applies to the the 256GB mini M2 and the 512GB mini M2, both with 8GB of RAM, bringing the tiny but mighty computers down to $549 and $749, respectively. It looks like Amazon is matching the price on both the 256GB model and the larger 512GB configuration. The Mac minis with the M2 Pro chip aren't seeing the same discount, though Amazon is listing those $10 below Apple's suggested price. 

If you're looking for a powerful desktop computer you can pair up with any monitor you have on hand, this is a great, low-cost way to get the power of Apple's new M2 chip. In our review, we gave the mini a solid score of 86, praising the excellent performance and the still-great, squat aluminum design that disappears into your desk. Around back, you've got plenty of ports to handle your accessories, including two Thunderbolt 4 UCB-C ports, an HDMI port with 4K output at 240Hz and 8K at 60Hz, two USB-A ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack and a gigabit Ethernet port, which you can upgrade to a 10 gigabit port, but it'll cost you an extra $150. 

Inside, there's the namesake M2 chip, which Apple first first offered in 2022. The chip combines computing operations, like CPU, GPU, input/output interfaces and certain memory processes into one "system on a chip," allowing for faster processing speeds. Apple has put the chip into new iPad Pros, their latest MacBook Pros and now the Mac mini. The chips in the discounted models have eight CPU cores, 10 graphics cores, 8GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage. That 8GB of RAM may strain under heavy browser tab loads, but should be suitable for most people's everyday work flows. The minis also make a good home theater computer, if you want even more customization than you'd get with an Apple TV. 

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The ID.3 isn't even three years old, but that isn't stopping Volkswagen from giving its well-known EV a makeover. After months of teasers, the company has introduced a second-generation ID.3 that addresses criticisms of the first model. The new compact car offers a "sharper" design with improved aerodynamics and a higher-quality (and heavily recycled) interior. More importantly, VW has upgraded the technology — including its software, which garnered a long list of complaints from drivers.

The second-gen ID.3 includes the "latest software," with a simpler layout, better performance and over-the-air updates. The 12-inch infotainment display is now standard. You also have access to a Travel Assist feature that uses "swarm" data to aid driving — the crowdsourced info can keep you in your lane on a backroad even if there's just one known lane marking. Charging should be easier, too, between an automatic charge start (at compatible stations) and a route planner that factors in the availability and capacity of stations along the way. Your car won't direct you to a busy station with slow chargers.

Don't expect huge changes in performance. The new ID.3 uses the same 201HP motor system and battery options as before. That nets up to 265 miles of range (using the WLTP testing method) with the base 58kWh battery and 339 miles with the 77kWh pack. Those are still very healthy figures for an EV this size, however, and VW has teased a smaller battery for those who only need a commuter car.

Production is slated to start in fall 2023. VW hasn't outlined pricing or country-by-country availability, but we wouldn't count on this reaching the US. Like the original ID.3, the revamp is aimed primarily at European customers where North America gets larger vehicles like the ID.4 crossover and upcoming ID.Buzz.

Volkswagen

Even larger software improvements are in store, regardless of where you live. VW's Cariad unit has unveiled an app store (pictured at middle) for the automaker's brands, including Audi and Porsche. The platform will help third parties bring apps to a wide range of cars with relatively little fuss, including over-the-air-updates. Major early partners tend to be driving-oriented services like Spotify, TuneIn, The Weather Channel and Plugshare. However, you'll also find TikTok, Cisco's Webex meeting app and even Vivaldi's web browser.

The app store debuts in several Audi models (including EVs like the E-Tron GT and Q8 E-Tron) this summer for European and North American customers. More models and VW brands are coming later. Don't expect to upgrade your existing ride, though, as VW cautions that the shop will only be available in cars produced from summer onward.

Back at CES, most of the big TV makers like LG and Samsung announced their upcoming high end TVs. But one major company was missing: Sony. Now it’s finally ready to show off its latest flagship sets, and after getting a chance to see them in person, I can say it was worth the wait.

Sony’s 2023 line of Bravia XR TVs, are all powered by the company’s Cognitive Processor XR. That means they share the same underlying tech and processing including support for stuff like Sony’s XR Clear Image tech, which allows for adaptive noise reduction, auto HDR tone mapping and more.

For 2023, Sony is trying to take as much of the guesswork out of setup as possible by making its TVs look great right out of the box in the standard video or cinematic modes. That means you shouldn’t have to fuss around with various settings or need to get your TV professionally calibrated. Granted calibration is still the way to go if you want to get the very best image quality, but for people who don’t have a colorimeter at home or don’t want to pay someone else to do it – which I think is pretty much everyone – this is a welcome upgrade.

Sony has also made a few design tweaks including new tweeters that are built into the frame of select models. While you can’t really see them, they help deliver richer and more expansive audio, particularly when paired with one of the company’s high-end soundbars with center sync audio. Sony is also introducing an updated stand for most of its new sets, which allows for a bit more flexibility when trying to accommodate external speakers and soundbars.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Finally, Sony also added new Gaming and Eco dashboards, so it’s easier to find and adjust various settings. For gaming, you have options like VRR, motion blur reduction and more. And for FPS fanatics, there’s even a setting for adding a permanent crosshair to the middle of the screen, complete with various reticle choices. Alternatively, the Eco Dashboard includes a simple walkthrough to help you choose power-saving settings, including a happy little tree that grows when you do things like reduce the brightness or enable shorter idle power-off times.

While Sony hasn’t released exact pricing just yet, the X90L will likely be the most affordable of the bunch, as it’s positioned as the entry-level option in the Bravia XR family. It’s the replacement to last year’s X90K, and sports a full-array LED panel with improved Clear Image upscaling and significantly reduced blooming. And while Sony doesn’t publicly disclose the exact number of dimming zones, the company says the X90L has up to 60 percent more dimming zones while also being up to 30 percent brighter than before.

Sam Rutherford

This model is also getting a new aluminum bezel instead of the plastic one on the X90K, and with the addition of a massive new 98-inch model, the X90L is the biggest TV in Sony’s 2023 Bravia XR lineup.

Next, when it comes to OLEDs, we have the A80L and A95L. Not only do both models boast improved contrast, when viewed side-by-side with rivals like the LG C2, I noticed Sony’s OLEDs definitely did a better job at preserving details in shadows. The A95L was particularly impressive thanks to its QD-OLED panel and Cognitive Processor, with Sony claiming brightness that's now two times higher than last year's model. This is big because for a long time, the brightness of OLED TVs has generally lagged behind that of more traditional LED sets. But now, Sony says the A95L is brighter than basically all but the most high-end LED rivals. And as someone who loves the super vibrant colors you get from OLED displays, the A95L might be my favorite of the entire line.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

Speaking of high-end, Sony’s X93L and X95L are the company’s two super premium flagship options. Both sets feature Mini LED displays with the main difference being that the X93L doesn’t come with Sony’s XR Clear Image tech. Meanwhile, the X95L offers similar peak brightness with 30 percent more local dimming zones. The downside is that the X95L is only available as an 85-inch model, so if you need something smaller, you’ll have to go with the X93L.

That said, when I compared the X93L and X95L to one of Sony’s super expensive reference monitors in a room with typical lighting, both did a great job of preserving details while also delivering extremely accurate colors. In certain scenes, Sony’s TV’s almost made rivals like Samsung’s QN90B look washed out. Admittedly, things like film grain were a bit more noticeable on the X93L because it doesn’t have Clear Image tech, but for film aficionados who really care about watching movies that look as close as possible to what the director intended, these are the sets to get.

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

After seeing the new TVs, regardless of what type of panel you prefer, all of Sony’s upcoming Bravia XR sets look fantastic. You get way more local dimming zones on the X90L line, while the two times higher brightness on the A95L is absolutely stunning. And with Sony adding larger screen options to basically all of its models, it should be even easier to find the right-size display for your room.

LastPass posted an update on its investigation regarding a couple of security incidents last year, and they sound worse than we thought. The hackers infiltrated a company DevOps engineer's home computer by exploiting a third-party media software package. They implanted a keylogger into the software and captured the engineer's master password for an account with access to the LastPass corporate vault. After they got in, they exported the vault's entries and shared folders with decryption keys. The company insisted all sensitive customer vault data, aside from some exceptions, "can only be decrypted with a unique encryption key derived from each user's master password." The company added it doesn't store users' master passwords.

– 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.

The biggest stories you might have missed

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• White House’s $39 billion in chip manufacturing incentives are now up for grabs

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Samsung Galaxy S23+ review

A solid phone that’s probably not worth the upgrade.

We’ve already reviewed the Galaxy S23 Ultra which, thanks to a large screen, onboard S-Pen and 200-megapixel camera, is aggressively targeted at power users. For everyone else looking to get a new Android phone, there’s the Galaxy S23+ or the S23. We tested the plus model and were impressed by the battery life, screen and, well, all the areas Samsung typically delivers on. But with few meaningful changes, the S23+ isn’t a hugely worthy upgrade if you’re using an S22 or S21.

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Bing AI is coming to the Windows 11 taskbar, of course

That didn't take long.

Three weeks after introducing the new AI-infused Bing, Microsoft is ready to shove it into a Windows 11 update today. If you're in the Bing AI preview, you'll be able to access all of its new features from the search box in the Windows 11 taskbar. Just imagine a slightly more streamlined version of what we saw with the Bing AI on Edge: In addition to general web searching, you can ask Bing natural language queries, and its intelligent chatbot will reply conversationally.

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Xiaomi's 300W demo fully charges a phone in 5 minutes

It's with a slightly smaller battery, but impressive nonetheless.

Realme’s 240W phone charging tech was big news last month. Given it's MWC week, today Xiaomi has swiftly responded with a whopping 300W demo, which brought the charging time down to a little under five minutes. The charger is the same size as the 200W equivalent. The phone reached 20 percent in a little over one minute and hit 50 percent in two minutes 12 seconds.

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OnePlus will launch its first foldable smartphone later this year

It promises to release more details in the coming months.

As well as revealing its latest experimental phone, which it envisions to have liquid cooling capabilities, OnePlus announced it’ll launch its first foldable smartphone in the second half of 2023. In the background at the OnePlus 11 event earlier this month, the company teased a mysterious Q3 2023 launch with what seemed to be silhouettes of devices that fold, but it fell short of saying what exactly they would be.

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FTX co-founder Nishad Singh pleads guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges

Singh has agreed to cooperate with the case against Sam Bankman-Fried.

Nishad Singh, a co-founder of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has pleaded guilty to US federal fraud and conspiracy charges. Singh, who was FTX's director of engineering, is the third member of Sam Bankman-Fried's inner circle to agree to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against him. Singh admitted to making illegal donations to political candidates and PACs under his name using funds from Alameda Research (FTX's sibling hedge fund and crypto trading firm).

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Elden Ring's first expansion is called Shadow of the Erdtree

FromSoftware says it's already in the works.

FromSoftware

Developer FromSoftware has confirmed the rumors circulating since earlier this year: Elden Ring is getting a big chunk of DLC. In an announcement posted on the game's Twitter account, the Japanese developer said an upcoming expansion entitled Shadow of the Erdtree is currently in development.

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TikTok is introducing new settings that are meant to reduce how much time teens are spending in the app. In an update, the company says it will automatically default teens under the age of 18 to a daily screen time limit of 60 minutes.

With the change, teens will still be able to bypass the daily limit, but they’ll be required to enter a passcode, “requiring them to make an active decision to extend that time,” the company says. Additionally, if teens opt to turn off the screen time limit altogether, TikTok will further prompt them to set a limit if they spend more than 100 minutes in the app.

The company is also adding new parental control features via the app’s “Family Pairing” feature, which allows parents to monitor their children’s activity on TikTok. Parents will be able to set their own custom screen time limits, and view a dashboard that details stats about their child’s time in the app, like how often they open it and what times of the day they use it most. Parents can also set a schedule for when their children can receive notifications, and choose to filter topics they don’t want to appear in their For You feeds.

The update comes as lawmakers in the United States have renewed their efforts to ban TikTok entirely. In addition to national security concerns, Congress has also criticized the company for not doing enough to protect its youngest users.

Meta has shared its latest augmented and virtual reality hardware roadmap with employees, and according to The Verge, it's planning to launch its first full-fledged AR glasses in 2027. While the company intends to release other AR glasses before then, the device it's launching in four years' time is the same one Mark Zuckerberg believes could become Meta's "iPhone moment." That is, he thinks it could shake up the industry and could become as popular as the iPhone. 

The glasses will reportedly have the capability to project avatars as high-quality holograms superimposed on top of the real world — they're also expected to be quite expensive. Employees will get the chance to take first crack at testing the device in 2024 before it makes its way to the public as Meta's "Innovation" line of advanced smart glasses for the earliest adopters. 

The company also discussed the other AR and VR devices it's launching before its full-fledged AR glasses are ready, The Verge says. This fall, it's apparently releasing a follow-up to Ray-Ban Stories, which it developed in partnership with Luxottica. The Quest 3 headset, which is expected to be twice as thin and as powerful as the Quest 2, will also be available later this year. In 2024, Meta also plans to launch a VR headset codenamed "Ventura," which it intends to sell "at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market." 

A year after that, in 2025, Meta plans to launch the third-generation Ray-Ban Stories. It will feature a display called the "viewfinder" designed to view incoming texts, scan QR codes and translate messages to other languages in real time. Users will reportedly be able to control the glasses with hand movements and will eventually be able to type messages using a virtual keyboard. In addition, Meta is developing a smartwatch to go with these particular glasses.

Meta isn't the only big technology company with plans to launch AR and VR glasses and headsets over the next few years. Apple is believed to be debuting its long-awaited mixed reality headset at WWDC in June. It's expected to have advanced features, such as dual 4K displays and controller-free input, and to cost as much as $3,000. However, reports suggest that Apple is working on a cheaper version that more people will be able to afford.