Twitter discussed creating an OnlyFans clone to monetize the adult content that's been prevalent on the platform for many years, but its inability to effectively detect and remove harmful sexual content put the brakes on that notion, according to a Verge investigation. A team Twitter put together to find out whether the company could pull off such a move determined this spring that "Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.” The team's findings were “part of a discussion, which ultimately led to us pause the workstream for the right reasons,” Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough said.

Twitter is said to have halted the Adult Content Monetization (ACM) project in May, not long after it agreed a $44 billion sale to Elon Musk — that deal is now up in the air. The company's leadership team determined that it couldn't move forward with ACM without enacting more health and safety measures.

The investigation (which you can read in full here) details warnings that Twitter researchers made in February 2021 about the company not doing enough to detect and remove harmful sexual content, such as Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The researchers are said to have informed the company that the enforcement system Twitter primarily uses, RedPanda, is “a legacy, unsupported tool” that is "by far one of the most fragile, inefficient and under-supported tools" it employs.

While the company has machine learning systems, those seemingly struggle to detect new instances of CSAM in tweets and livestreams. Twitter manually reports CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). However, the researchers noted that the labor-intensive process led to a backlog of cases and a delay in reporting CSAM to NCMEC. Rosborough told The Verge that since the researchers released their report last year, Twitter has significantly increased its investment in detecting CSAM and is hiring several specialists to tackle the issue.

“Twitter has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation,” Rosborough said. “We aggressively fight online child sexual abuse and have invested significantly in technology and tools to enforce our policy. Our dedicated teams work to stay ahead of bad-faith actors and to help ensure we’re protecting minors from harm — both on and offline.”

Advertisers may have bristled at the notion of Adult Content Monetization (even though porn is widespread on the platform), but the potential financial upside for Twitter was clear. OnlyFans expects to bring in $2.5 billion in revenue this year, which is about half of what Twitter generated in 2021. Twitter offers creators several ways to directlymonetize the large audiences many of them have built on the platform. Adding OnlyFans-style functions might have been a goldmine for adult content creators and the company. Broader issues have prevented the company from taking that step, despite the improvements it claims to have made over the last 18 months.

Engadget has contacted Twitter for comment.

The custom mechanical keyboard market has exploded in recent years. Where you previously had to go through arduous group buys to obtain many of the best models, there are now mainstream options you can purchase at any time. Drop (née Massdrop) has been a go-to for many just starting their descent into the hobby. Today, the company is introducing its first new keyboard since 2019. Dubbed the Sense75, it’s a 75 percent layout board with about all the features a budding enthusiast could want.

As with the Ctrl and Alt, Drop will offer two versions of the Sense75. Starting today, you can order the keyboard pre-built with the company’s highly sought-after Holy Panda X switches and DCX keycaps included. Then, later this year, Drop will begin selling a barebones kit that comes with only the frame and PCB, making it ready for you to customize to your heart’s content.

Drop

The Sense75 also comes in two colors: “Nightfall” and “Polar,” with the latter incorporating an electrophoretic coating that creates a “stunning and clean look” but is also more expensive to produce. A pre-built Sense75 in the former will set you back $349, while the latter costs a cool $399. If you want to go the frame-only route, you’ll pay either $249 or $299. 

With prebuilt pricing starting at $349, Drop has set its sights on the Glorious GMMK Pro. It’s widely considered one of the best “entry-level” custom keyboards you can buy. The two share many of the same features. They’re both 75 percent layout boards with a gasket-mounted plate to dampen keystrokes. Similarly, both allow you to hot-swap switches, so there’s no soldering involved if you want to try a new set of tactile, linear or clicky switches. The Sense75 even has a rotary dial just like the GMMK Pro, and both offer customizable RGB lighting. Speaking of customization, the Sense75 supports both QMK and VIA firmware.  

The first 500 people who order the Sense75 will get a free MT3 keycap set, carrying case and a limited edition novelty keycap with their purchase. The first shipments will arrive sometime in November.

Well-renowned peripheral maker 8BitDo has revealed three new versions of its Ultimate Controller, including two wireless options. There are Bluetooth, 2.4GHz and wired variants, all of which are available to pre-order now. The controllers will ship on October 28th.

Both the Bluetooth and 2.4GHz models have rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and come with a charging dock. All three have a switch that allows you to swap between three profiles on the fly. You can remap the controller and adjust other settings using 8BitDo's Ultimate Software on Windows, Android and iOS (but only on PC for the wired controller). The Xbox-style controller also has two back paddle buttons.

8BitDo

The Bluetooth version works with Nintendo Switch and Windows, though you may need to connect the included 2.4GHz adapter (which nestles inside the charging dock) to your PC. It costs $70 and it's available in black and white. The 2.4GHz model is compatible with Windows, Android and Raspberry Pi, 8BitDo says. That one comes in white, black and pastel pink. It's all yours for $50.

As for the wired USB variant, that's compatible with Switch, Windows, Android and Raspberry Pi. Other features include trigger vibration and enhanced grip. You can choose between black and white colorways for the wired version, which will run you $35.

8BitDo

Sony has unveiled its latest Dolby Atmos soundbar, the 3.1-channel HT-A3000. It's a more affordable alternative to the higher-end 5.1.2-channel A5000 and the flagship 7.1.2-channel A7000, albeit with a lot of the same tech included in those models. While this model doesn't have any upfiring speakers, it does virtualize the height channels using Virtual Surround Engine and S-Force Pro Front Surround tech. The device has a dedicated center speaker for dialogue and a dual subwoofer for bass tones. It also has 250W of output.

The A3000 doesn't come with rear speakers. However, it does support the 360 Spatial Sound Mapping tech found in the previous two models. You'll need to connect the soundbar to Sony's wireless rear speakers, like the SA-RS5 or SA-RS35, to use that option.

Sony

The Sound Field Optimization feature uses the built-in microphones to detect the relative height and position of the rear speakers and soundbar. Sony says 360 Spatial Sound Mapping will then be able to set up several "phantom speakers." It does this by synthesizing sound waves based on positional information from the soundbar and rear speakers.

In addition, there's an Acoustic Center Sync feature you can use with some compatible Bravia TVs. With this switched on, both the soundbar and the TV's speakers act as the center channel. The idea is to increase the sense of immersion — Sony says you'll hear dialogue from where a character is positioned in the scene. On top of that, there's support for 360 Reality Audio and DTS:X.

You can use Chromecast (which is built in), Spotify Connect and AirPlay 2 to play music from several streaming services. In addition, users can play audio wirelessly from other devices via WiFi or Bluetooth 5.0. The A3000 is compatible with Google Assistant and Alexa. It's possible to connect the soundbar to a speaker group through Google Home for whole-home audio playback. As for connecting the soundbar to your home theater setup, there are HDMI eARC, USB and optical in ports, as well as HDMI eARC and S-Center outputs.

Sony

The A3000 doesn't have as much power or as many channels as the A5000 or the A7000, but it won't leave you as light in the pocket. It costs $700, compared with $1,000 for the A5000 and $1,400 for the A7000. You can pre-order the latest model now from Amazon and other retailers.

Meanwhile, the SA-RS5 wireless rear speakers offer 180W of wider surround sound, Sony says. They have built-in batteries and upfiring speakers. Those are available now for $600. The company is also selling the SA-RS3S wireless rear speakers, which have 100W of output and cost $350.

If you need extra storage to help you wrangle and organize all the files overtaking your computers and mobile devices, don't miss out on Amazon's latest one-day sale. The e-commerce website is selling a robust collection of SanDisk and Western Digital storage devices and memory cards at a discount right now, priced at up to 61 percent off. You can get SanDisk's 1TB Extreme Pro, which is currently listed for $160.49 or 48 percent off its regular price, if you're looking to bring a ruggedized storage solution everywhere you go. 

It's encased in a forged aluminum chassis that acts as a heatsink enabling the device to sustain its read/write speeds that go up to 2000MB/s. The device can survive drops from up to 2 meters in height and is IP55 water-and-dust resistant — it even comes with a carabiner loop to prevent you from dropping it in the first place. And to protect the files you save, it also features 256‐bit AES hardware encryption.

Looking for an internal storage for your PC-building needs instead? The 1TB Western Digital SN770 NVMe Solid State Drive that was designed to enable a smoother gaming experience is also on sale for $80, which is $50 less than its usual price. It has a read speed of up to 5,150MB/s and uses an advanced thermal management technology to help it maintain consistent speeds. 

If what you need is a memory card, the one-day sale has a number of them listed, as well. One of the models on sale is SanDisk's 512GB Extreme microSDXC UHS-I Memory Card that's currently being sold for $58. That's $72 less than what the UHS Speed Class 3 and video Speed Class 30 (V30) microSDXC card usually costs. Amazon also has memory cards with smaller capacities on sale, though, if you're looking for something even cheaper.

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Uber has announced some upgrades for its Safety Toolkit. Among the new features is a way to get live help from an ADT safety agent via phone call or text in the US. The agent can monitor a trip, stay in contact with the user throughout the duration and, if necessary, contact 911 on their behalf. The agent can provide authorities with the make and model of the vehicle, the license plate number and its GPS location.

On a similar note, Uber is expanding its text-to-911 feature across more of the US. The app can automatically populate a text with details about the vehicle and the ride, including the destination and current location.

Uber debuted the feature in Los Angeles, Minnesota and Indiana in 2019. It will now be available in almost 60 percent of the country, including New York City and all of California, as 911 call centers in those areas can receive text messages. Uber plans to expand the option to more regions where the technology is supported.

In addition, Uber has revamped the Safety Toolkit menu. There are large icons that show all the available urgent help options, such as an emergency button. "Our goal is to streamline access to and visibility of our most critical safety features because in an emergency, every second counts," the company said. Uber introduced the Safety Toolkit in 2018. Other safety features include the option to verify a ride with a PIN code and share the status of a trip with friends and family.

Giving riders and drivers more options for assistance is a welcome move, particularly given that Uber doesn't exactly have a spotless safety record. The company's most recent safety report, which was published in June and covers 2019 and 2020, notes that 99.9 percent of trips ended without a reported safety incident. However, there were 20 fatalities reported "in a total of 19 physical assault incidents in relation to Uber." 

There were also 3,824 reports of sexual assault, compared with nearly 6,000 in 2017 and 2018. The company says riders were the accused party 43 percent of the time in sexual assault reports in 2019 and 2020. In July, more than 500 women sued Uber, alleging that they were attacked by drivers.

Twitter’s feature for tweeting only to close friends is now available to all its users. After nearly four months of testing, Twitter Circle is rolling out for everyone to help people feel “more comfortable tweeting and expressing themselves.”

Twitter Circle is a bit like Instagram’s “close friends” feature.. Meant to be a sort of middle-ground between a public and private account, users can designate some tweets to be viewable only to a smaller “circle” of up to 150 followers. The feature could help address a long-running issue for the company: that many Twitter users simply don’t feel comfortable tweeting that much, either for fear of harassment or simply the pressures associated with public-facing accounts.

Interestingly, Twitter says that its early tests of the feature have shown that users with Circle tweet more overall, and get more likes and replies when tweeting to a smaller group. The company notes that it also reduces the need for users to have a secondary account or switching their accounts back and forth between public and private.

Twitter Circle is the latest way Twitter has tried to create spaces for users to interact with smaller audiences without making their accounts completely private. The company has also experimented with a Facebook Groups-like feature, called Communities, and subscriber-only content for creators with Super Follows. But Twitter Circle, which users can access directly from the tweet composer, is an even more accessible way of controlling the audience for each tweet. That may seem at odds with the “town square” vision of Twitter vaunted by its would-be acquirer, but increased engagement could also help the company’s bottom line.

Sony improved upon its already stellar WH-1000XM4 headphones earlier this year by introducing their follow-up, the WH-1000XM5. The new cans make nearly everything about the previous model ever so slightly better, putting them in a class of their own — and their $398 price tag reflects that. But now you can snag the XM5 for roughly $60 less than usual thanks to a one-day sale at Woot that brings the black model down to $340. That's the best price we've seen since the headphones came out in May.

Sony did make some subtle changes to the design of the XM5. Compared to the XM4, the new headphones have a slimmed down headband and a more modern look overall. They only weigh slightly less than their predecessor, but they feel much lighter when you're wearing them, which should make them even more comfortable to wear for hours on end.

Somehow, Sony managed to make sound quality and active noise cancellation even better on the XM5. The headphones have new 30mm carbon fiber drivers that handle audio, which is well-tuned for a wide variety of genres and has better depth and clarity. ANC has improved thanks to additional processors and a total of microphones that help detect noise and block it out. Overall, the XM5 does a better job of blocking out things like nearby voices and TV noise than its predecessor.

The XM5 work with Sony's companion mobile app as well, which you can use do change settings and do things like enable multipoint connectivity, change voice assistants and more. As far as battery life goes, you'll get roughly 30 hours before you'll need to recharge them, and it'll only take three minutes to get three hours of playback time. Make no mistake, the Sony's WH-1000XM4 are still great headphones (which you can often find on sale as well), but the XM5 cans are the ones to get if you want all of the latest features and some of the best ANC you'll find on over-ear headphones.

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Elon Musk has filed an updated notice to kill his $44 billion Twitter acquisition by citing whistleblower Peiter Zatko, Twitter's former head of security. In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk alleged that Twitter "has not complied with its contractual obligations" due to the "extreme, egregious deficiencies" alleged by Zatko.

Musk filed his initial bid to terminate the acquisition agreement on July 12th because of "false and misleading representations" made by Twitter, alleging that it "dramatically" understated the number of spam and fake accounts. Twitter sued Musk in July to force him to honor his agreement, saying that he "apparently believes that he... is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk way." Musk filed a countersuit later that month. 

With the updated filing, Musk's lawyers said that Zatko has revealed "additional and distinct bases to terminate the merger agreement," and that Twitter was in "material noncompliance" with its FTC obligations. Specifically, they said that Twitter is "uniquely vulnerable to systemic disruption resulting from data center failures or malicious actors," something the company "ignored and sought to obfuscate." 

Yesterday, Musk subpoenaed Zatko for a deposition on September 9th, requesting materials related to how Zatko’s tenure at Twitter ended and what stock, if any, he owns in the company. It also requested documents that may indicate any illegal activity by Twitter. Twitter and its CEO Parago Agrawal have disputed Zatko's assertions, laid out in a lengthy whistleblower complaint against the company. 

A court case between Musk and Twitter is set to go to trial in October. On top of that, US Senate and Congressional committee leaders announced that were investigating Zatko's claims, saying they "raise serious concerns" about the company's security and other issues. 

France’s Budget Minister Gabriel Attal announced plans for a lease program to open up EV use. “We know that for many French, [EVs] remain very expensive,” he said, adding the government was working to figure out how quickly it could implement the measure. 

Reuters

At the moment, under a subsidy scheme similar to the one introduced by the US Inflation Reduction Act, French car buyers can receive as much as €6,000 off electric vehicles less than €47,000. Under this new electric vehicle subsidy program, people could lease an EV for €100 ($100) per month.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Apple TV+ is here to stay on T-Mobile's Magenta Max plan

• Google's Pixel 6a drops to a new low of $370 on Amazon

• Elon Musk subpoenas Twitter whistleblower

• Netflix secures global streaming rights to 'Berserk,' 'Parasyte,' 'Monster' and other classic anime

• A new Mafia game is in development

• FTC sues company for selling identifiable location data, including abortion clinic visits

The best affordable Windows laptops

Chromebooks aren’t always the answer.

You probably don’t think of cheap Windows laptops when you think of daily drivers. But it would be a big mistake to ignore these devices – if not for yourself, for someone close. There’s a reason the big PC companies, like Acer, ASUS and Dell, make Windows devices for under $500. We lay out what to look out for (things like an SSD with at least 128GB of space, a 1080p display and a mostly metal design) and share our top choices.

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What we bought: Cuisinart’s ice cream maker wasn’t my first choice

But it’s getting the job done.

While Senior News Editor Billy Steele wanted a White Mountain ice cream maker, they’re hard to pick up. Eventually, he received Cuisinart’s Pure Indulgence two-quart ice cream maker as a gift. It’s a compact countertop model that takes up about the same space as a food processor. It has a bowl insert you stick in the freezer to chill, and a plastic dasher churns your ice cream. You just really need to ensure the mixing bowl is properly chilled and homemade ice cream is all yours.

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Apple may have registered more 'Reality' trademarks for its upcoming AR headset

It registered 'Reality One,' 'Reality Pro' and 'Reality Processor' in the US and elsewhere.

Reuters

Apple may again be looking to nail down "Reality" trademarks ahead of the launch of its much-anticipated AR/VR headset. While Apple didn't directly request the trademarks, law firms the company has previously used applied for "Reality One," "Reality Pro" and "Reality Processor" in the US, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica and Uruguay. With realityOS as a potential name for the operating system, Reality One and Reality Pro could be naming options for the actual headsets. "Reality Processor” could be an M2-based chip to power those.

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Sony launches 'PlayStation Studios Mobile' with Savage Game acquisition

It's jumping into mobile gaming.

Sony has announced a fresh push into mobile gaming with the launch of a new division inside PlayStation Studios, aptly called PlayStation Studios Mobile, and the acquisition of Savage Game Studios. Sony said the new studio will be "providing more ways for more people to engage with our content.” Savage Game Studio doesn't appear to have produced any games yet, but its co-founders had a hand in mobile franchises like Clash of Clans and Angry Birds. It will join PlayStation Studios Mobile, which will operate separately from its console division and create "new experiences" based on PlayStation IP and franchises. You know, like all those movies.

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Facebook now supports NFTs

Together at last.

Meta

Meta has followed through on its promise to bring NFT (non-fungible token) support to Facebook. Users can now post digital collectibles they have in their digital wallets across Facebook and Instagram. After they connect digital wallets to one app, they'll be able to access NFTs from both of them. Meta is moving deeper into NFT territory even though the market for the digital tokens has nosedived in recent months.

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