Opera launched its dedicated "Crypto Browser" into beta back in January, promising to make Web3 as accessible as any Web2 website. The company released the browser for Windows, Mac and Android users back then, but the version for iOS devices still wasn't ready for rollout. Now, Opera has announced that the Crypto Browser for iPhones and iPads is out and available for download from its website.
The browser comes with a built-in non-custodial crypto wallet that supports the Ethereum, Bitcoin and other blockchain ecosystems. It will allow users to buy crypto coins with fiat currency and to trade any supported token without needing to install extensions. In addition, the browser will give users access to Web3-based NFTs and decentralized apps, including 7,000 services based on the Polygon ecosystem.
One of the browser's other features is a Crypto Corner start page, where users can get live information and updates on cryptocurrency, such as the latest prices and events, airdrops and relevant podcasts. Opera says it designed the browser for both veteran crypto users, as well as newbies who still need help navigating cryptocurrencies and Web3.
Jorgen Arnesen, EVP Mobile at Opera, said in a statement:
"The interest in Web3 is continuing to grow. The Opera Crypto Browser Project was built to simplify the Web3 user experience that has often been bewildering for mainstream users. Opera believes Web3 has to be easy to use in order to reach its full potential and a mass adoption."
Opera didn't say whether the iOS browser supports the more energy-efficient Etherium Layer 2 standard. It did launch Layer 2 support for the Android version back in February, however, which the company claims makes it the first mobile browser to have the feature.
Don’t worry, yes, there are even more Musk machinations, but first let’s broach something a little different — and possibly lifesaving. A team of MIT engineers is developing a telerobotic system for neurosurgeons. It unveiled a robotic arm that doctors can control remotely using a modified joystick to treat stroke patients.
The arm has a magnet attached to its wrist, and surgeons can adjust its orientation to guide a magnetic wire through the patient's arteries and vessels to remove blood clots in the brain. Like in-person procedures, surgeons will have to rely on live imaging to get to the blood clot, but the machine means they don’t have to be physically with the patient.
There’s a critical time window after someone suffers a stroke to ensure the best chance of recovery. The robot could make treatment possible even if a neurosurgeon is miles away.
'Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.'
Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion, telling the SEC in a filing that the deal would be good for free speech. "I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," he wrote. If the deal goes through, Musk plans to take the company private.
It was another busy day for Musk: He held a TED talk where he said he wants Twitter's algorithm to be open source. And hopefully the final Twitter–Musk headline for the week: The Tesla boss is no longer the biggest shareholder of Twitter. At least, for now.
Researchers have revealed a new thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cell that converts heat to electricity with over 40 percent efficiency and performance nearly on par with traditional steam turbine power plants. The cells have the potential to be grid-scale "thermal batteries," generating energy dependably with no moving parts.
That's on top of the fees they're paying for Amazon's fulfillment services.
Amazon will charge US sellers using its fulfillment services a five percent fuel and inflation fee. It will add the fees on April 28th to what it already collects from third-party sellers using the Fulfillment by Amazon service to store, pack and ship their goods.
It can import contacts, calendar, videos, photos and more.
Google has finally countered Apple's Move to iOS app by releasing Switch to Android for iOS on the App Store, confirming earlier rumors. As the name indicates, it's designed to help iPhone and iPad users import contacts, photos, calendars and video to an Android device. It also shows users how to turn off iMessage in favor of Android messaging and transfer photos/videos by connecting to iCloud. It’s a big improvement over the current system, which requires users to back up photos, video, calendar and contacts through the Google Drive iOS app.
If you’re looking for a connected speaker, the options are good. And varied. You just need to figure out what you need — and how much you want to spend. We’ve separated our guide into three price ranges, from $50 up to $450 and even higher, while touching on exactly what you need to consider.
The US is still on high alert for more cyberattacks against critical infrastructure. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Energy Department, FBI and NSA have issued a warning that hackers have developed custom malware to hijack industrial control systems. Nicknamed Incontroller by Mandiant researchers, the "very likely" state-backed code breaches controllers from Omron and Schneider Electric that are frequently used in automation, across power grids, manufacturing and other industries. Mandiant said the malware's capabilities were "consistent" with Russia's past efforts and its "historical interest" in compromising industrial control systems.
The Theremin is how Bob Moog got his start building instruments and eventually selling kits for customers to make their own. Which makes it kind of a big deal when the company introduces a new model. The Etherwave Theremin is based on a 1996 design from Bob Moog himself and replaces its Etherwave and Etherwave Plus. It also looks much, much cooler.
DC Attorney General Karl Racine has filed a motion (PDF) asking the court to reconsider its decision to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit he filed against Amazon in 2021. In the original lawsuit, Racine accused the e-commerce giant of "illegally abusing and maintaining its monopoly power by controlling prices across the online retail market." Third-party sellers that use Amazon's Marketplace have to abide by the company's agreement, which includes a fair pricing policy. If they sell their goods for lower prices elsewhere, Amazon could remove their items' buy box, suspend their shipment option and even terminate their selling privileges for "serious or repeated cases."
The company stopped telling sellers back in 2019 in the midst of antitrust scrutiny that they couldn't sell their products for cheaper prices elsewhere. However, the company later added back a clause under its fair pricing policy that's nearly identical. Racine argued that since sellers price their goods with Amazon's cut in mind, the policy artificially raises prices even on sellers' own websites and on competing e-commerce platforms.
Amazon told us when Racine first filed the lawsuit that the Attorney General had it "exactly backwards." The spokesperson said: "Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively. The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law." The Superior Court of the District of Columbia sided with Amazon and threw out Racine's complaint back in March.
Now, the DC AG wants another chance at proving that Amazon violated antitrust laws. His office's amended complaint includes additional details about how the company's policy violates DC code, mostly focusing on how it "causes prices to District residents to be higher than they otherwise would be" and how it inhibits sellers from competing with Amazon's own products.
Racine said in a statement about the motion he filed:
"We're asking the court to reconsider its decision to dismiss our Amazon case because the antitrust laws and facts are on our side and we are determined to continue standing up for DC consumers. Amazon illegally uses its market power to prevent sellers from lowering their prices on other platforms — including their own. This results in higher prices for DC consumers."
After 17 years, Reddit is finally making its comments searchable, it announced. Users can now get search results from replies to posts, rather than just the original posts and topics within a community. "Previously [you] would have to look through each post in the r/London community, browsing the comments to find it," the product and design staff wrote. "Now, [you] can easily see all the different recommendations on the best places for high tea that people have shared in comments."
Reddit
The ability to search comments was the top feature request from a survey conducted by Reddit last year. On top of that, during Reddit's "limited initial testing," around 26,000 people employed the feature to scan through more than five billion comments.
Reddit also improved search relevance to help users find results. Previously, a result had to match a query nearly exactly, but it's now less restrictive. "For example, let’s say someone searches for 'dogecoin stonks 2021,' and doesn't find what they’re looking for because there isn't an exact match; with our new treatment, they’re more likely to get related results." In fact, Reddit said that it saw a 60 percent increase in results for queries that previously didn't receive results. Search now also prioritizes newer content looks at a users search history to prioritize results.
Finally, Reddit improved its search interface with a new, simpler design based on user feedback. It now prioritizes posts over other types of content and simplifies the results page so you can more easily find what you're looking for. It's also reducing the number of unexpected results based on intent "to make search safer," it said. The new features are now available around the world on the desktop website, but there's no word on when they're coming to the apps.
Apple may soon release a new set of Mac computers powered by the next generation of its homegrown chip. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the tech giant has started the widespread testing of at least nine Mac models with four different M2 chips, which suggests that Apple is gearing up to launch them. While it's not supposed to be public knowledge, Apple has been testing the machines using third-party apps from the App Store, and those applications' developer logs give us an idea of what to expect from the company's upcoming batch of computers.
One of the devices reportedly being tested is a MacBook Air with an M2 chip) that has eight CPU cores and 10 cores for graphics, up from eight in the current model. Previous reports suggest that the next MacBook Air will feature a major redesign, which may include a thinner frame, more ports and MagSafe charging. Apple is also apparently testing a couple of Mac minis powered by an M2 and an M2 Pro chip, as well as an entry-level M2 MacBook Pro with the same specifications as the aforementioned MacBook Air.
Apple just released its 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros in October, but Gurman says the company has started testing new 14-inch and 16-inch laptops with 64GB of memory powered by M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. The M2 Max apparently has 12 CPU cores and 38 graphics cores, up from 10 and 32 in the current models. Finally, there's the new Mac Pro that will reportedly be powered by the M1 Ultra's successor. The M1 Ultra, which was just recently launched, is Apple's most robust chip yet and currently powers the Mac Studio. Gurman warns that there are no guarantees that the company will release all the models it's currently testing. That said, he believes the new MacBook Air and Mac mini, as well as the new entry-level MacBook Pro will be released sometime this year.
Viewers have long complained about the early HBO Max app’s tendency to crash, and its lack of discoverability features. There have been a number of overhauls and fixes since then. Now we know why. Turns out that HBO Max launched its apps before they were ready in order to keep up with its competitors. The app was “never intended to go global” or to suit the needs of a direct-to-consumer market, according to an interview that Sarah Lyons, HBO Max’s head of product experience, gave Protocol. The network wanted to build an audience first, and then fix the app’s flaws as the service scaled up.
While Lyons admits that the early days of HBO Max were rocky, she thinks the company made the right decision. We’ve been changing out the engine of the plane while we’re flying the plane,” she said. “I do think it was the right decision to try to balance both,” said Lyons.
HBO Max first released its app in May 2020, to join an already saturated streaming ecosystem that included Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Apple TV+ and others. At the time, both HBO Go (the network’s on-demand app for cable subscribers) and HBO Now (the standalone app for cord-cutters) were still available, a fact that confused many subscribers. The network has since retired both apps.
Viewers have flocked to Reddit since the app’s initial launch with complaints that spanned platforms and devices. “We’ve been trying to watch the Harry Potter movies and literally every 15 min or so we get an ERROR message and have to force close the app. Another time it froze completely. It’s absolute garbage. I don’t have this problem with any other app or streaming service,” wrote one user in a thread on the r/HBOMax subreddit from January 2021 entitled “Why does this app suck so hard?”
For many viewers long-accustomed to advanced recommendation algorithms on Netflix and other streaming platforms, it was hard to get used to HBO Max’s lack of discoverability features. Lyons admitted that HBO Max wasn’t built with discovery in mind, and the app tried to address this by putting every new show on the app’s home page. “You didn't have to go find anything, because whatever [show] you were looking for was going to be at the top of the home page,” said Lyons.
While Engadget’s early review of HBO Max detailed its flaws, we pointed out that it was still a “smart bet” for the company. Since then, the service has made many improvements, including a new Apple TV app and updates to its apps for Roku, Playstation, Android TV and others. But following a recent $43 billion merger with Discovery, the biggest change is yet to come. The plan is to merge both Discovery Plus and HBO Max into one unified platform.
HBO Max ended 2021 with 43.8 million subscribers, when combined with the network’s cable subscribers of HBO who also have access to the streaming service. It’ll soon absorb at least another 22 million subscribers from Discovery Plus. While there could be more bumps down the road, viewers can at least be assured that HBO Max has more experience under its belt now.
The Overwatch 2 PvP beta starts later this month and Blizzard has released a gameplay trailer for one of the sequel's main additions, Sojourn. She's the 33rd hero in the Overwatch lineup, but is the first character to be introduced in two years. Sojourn is a damage hero best suited for mid-range combat and you can take a look at her in action below.
Sojourn has a railgun with two modes of fire. The primary fire sends out rapid projectiles that build up energy on impact. With her secondary fire, you can fire that stored energy as a high-impact shot.
There's a movement ability called Power Slide. You'll be able to cancel that with a high jump (similar to Moira's Fade). She also has a Disruptor Shot, which is an area-of-effect ability that slows and damages enemies in its radius.
Sojourn's ultimate ability is called Overclock. This supercharges the secondary fire of the railgun by automatically restoring the energy. Shots fired while the ability is active will pierce enemies, so if you can line a couple up, you can take them both out at once. In other words, you'll need to have decent aim and positioning to get the most out of her.
Blizzard also released a trailer that delves into Sojourn's origin story. She was a member of the Canadian Special Forces whose unit linked up with the Overwatch task force during the Omnic Crisis. She forged a partnership with Jack Morrison (aka Soldier: 76) and, after the war, he recruited her to the group.
Sojourn is the first playable Black woman in the series. She will be available in the Overwatch 2 PvP beta, which starts on April 26th. The competitive side of the sequel will mark a shift from teams of six to five-player squads and add new maps, an updated game engine, a ping system and many changes to the current roster of heroes. The Overwatch League will also play games using the Overwatch 2 beta when it returns next month.
Like an ambitious butcher trying to cleave a dollar of meat out of a ten cent steak, Major League Baseball announced on Thursday that it is carving out a bit more of its television broadcast rights, renewing its four season-old deal for the "MLB Game of the Week Live on YouTube" with the Alphabet property. But unlike other recently struck deals, these streaming exclusives will be free to watch and without local blackout restrictions.
Beginning with the Rockies-Nats game on May 5th (first pitch 3:10 ET), YouTube will once again be home to more than a dozen MLB games throughout the 2022 season. Broadcasters Scott Braun and Yonder Alonso return to call the play-by-play. The full lineup is as follows:
Washington Nationals at Colorado Rockies — Thursday, May 5 @ 3:10 ET
Milwaukee Brewers at Cincinnati Reds — Wednesday, May 11 @ 12:35 ET
Arizona Diamondbacks at Chicago Cubs — Friday, May 20 @ 2:20 ET
Detroit Tigers at Minnesota Twins — Wednesday, May 25 @ 1:10 ET
Kansas City Royals at Cleveland Guardians — Wednesday, June 1 @ 1:10 ET
Toronto Blue Jays at Kansas City Royals — Wednesday, June 8 @ 2:10 ET
Minnesota Twins at Seattle Mariners — Wednesday, June 15 @ 4:10 ET
YouTubeTV subscribers will be able to find these games on the service's dedicated Game of the Week channel while everybody else will see them on the MLB YouTube page. Fans will be able to interact with the broadcasts either via the live chat, "featuring game commentary from MLB superfan YouTube creators," as well as in-game polls and, for subscribers, access to real-time game stats.
The 2022 MLB season is riddled with exclusive broadcast deals. Beyond the standard local blackout rules, 18 Sunday games will be only available with a $10/month Peacock subscription, AppleTV+ ($6/month) gets the Friday Doubleheaders, and ESPN has dibs on Sunday Night Baseball. There's also MLB.TV which has rights to everything but is far more expensive than its alternatives, at least until the All-Star break.
Meta's Horizon Worlds might not require that you don a headset to get a taste of Horizon Worlds. In response to criticisms of Meta's 47.5 percent cut of sales in the virtual world, CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth teased that a future "web version" would demand a more reasonable 25 percent. That's "much lower" than rivals like Roblox, the exec claimed.
Bosworth didn't say more about how the web edition would work or when it would launch. It's not clear if this is a VR environment or a scaled-back experience, for instance.
When Horizon’s web version launches, the Horizon platform fee will only be 25%—a much lower rate compared to other similar world-building platforms.
The CTO justified the 47.5 percent rate for Quest headset users by maintaining that it was needed to "help build a different ecosystem." Meta reaches that value by taking a 30 percent slice of revenue through the Quest Store and then 25 percent from the remaining amount in Horizon Worlds. This math would apply if the Quest Store was replaced with another platform "underneath," Bosworth added, such as Apple's App Store or the Google Play Store.
This might offer some consolation to creators worried they'd lose nearly half of all sales revenue to Meta's share. You could buy a digital item in Horizon Worlds' web version knowing the designer would get a much larger portion than if you made the same purchase in VR.
It might not soften all the criticism, however. Bosworth rebutted Apple's accusations of hypocrisy by claiming the iPhone maker favors its business "at great expense" to developers. However, it's still true that Meta will frequently collect revenue from two services where Apple, Google and others will only scoop up payments from one. That won't please creatives who hope to live off their digital item sales and may have to raise prices to compensate for Meta's approach.
The Ronin Network (the company behind the blockchain behind the game) updated its ongoing page regarding the cyberattack on Thursday, noting that "the Treasury Department has sanctioned the address that received the stolen funds."
"We are still in the process of adding additional security measures before redeploying the Ronin Bridge to mitigate future risk," the company continued. "Expect the bridge to be deployed by end of month." Additionally, the Ronin Network plans to release "a full post mortem" detailing the new security measures being put in place, by the end of the month.
