Were she still alive, Betty White would be celebrating her 100th birthday today. In honor of that occasion, Google is celebrating the actor's life. Type White's full name into the company's search engine and you'll be treated to a special graphic. "Thank you for being a friend," the tribute reads, referencing White's most famous role, as rose petals fall from the top of the screen. White passed away of natural causes at the age of 99 on December 31st. White's decades-long career was full of highlights that included starring roles on popular sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls. In 2010, she also hosted Saturday Night Live at the age of 88.
If you’ve been patiently waiting to pick up the new iMac, now is your chance to do so at a discount. Amazon has reduced the cost of the 8-core GPU model to $1,399, down from $1,499. That’s a price that matches the previous all-time low the retailer established for Apple’s latest all-in-one computer back in December.
We like the new 24-inch iMac a lot. We awarded it a score of 89 when we reviewed it last year. Featuring the same M1 chip that’s found in the 2020 MacBook Air, the 2021 iMac is fit for most computing tasks, including photo and video editing. It’s also 50 percent quieter than its Intel predecessor thanks to a more efficient thermal design. The 24-inch model also comes with an excellent 4.5K display that covers the entire DCI-P3 color gamut. Another handy upgrade is the included 1080p FaceTime camera. It makes use of AI software to enhance the color and exposure of your footage.
Some of the few drawbacks to note are that the display isn’t HDR-capable and the included Magic Mouse and Keyboard aren’t for everyone. Specific to this promotion, Amazon has only discounted the green and silver models.
If you want to save as much money as possible, Amazon has had the base model discounted to $1249 for a couple of weeks. That said, we think the 8-core GPU model is a better value. In addition to a more capable GPU, it comes with two extra USB-A ports (its more affordable sibling only has USB-C connectivity), Gigabit Ethernet and a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID. Those might seem like small additions, but they add a lot to the useability of the machine.
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If you've been waiting for a decent deal on an Apple Watch Series 7, now might be the time to take the leap. You can get up to $60 (as much as 15 percent) off the smartwatch at Amazon at the minute. The biggest discounts are on the green versions of both the GPS and cellular models. The 41mm GPS Apple Watch Series 7 has dropped from $399 to $339, while the cellular variant is down from $499 to $439 — an all-time low price for that model.
We've seen the GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 7 drop to this price before. It dipped to $339 in late December, the lowest price we'd seen to date. Still, it's a good deal on a smartwatch to which we gave a score of 90 in our review. While sleep tracking might not be as robust as in say, a Fitibit, it's still arguably the best all-around smartwatch on the market, thanks to features like workout tracking, fast charging and deep integration with iOS.
Some variants of the GPS Apple Watch Series 7 are on sale, though with a slightly smaller reduction. The (Product) RED, black and blue versions are down to $349. Other cellular models are $50 off too. You can snag it in blue, white or black for $449.
Meanwhile, as was the case in a one-day sale on Woot last week and on Amazon earlier this month, you can snag a four-pack of AirTags for $94, which is five percent off the regular price. As with Tile trackers, the idea is to help you keep track of your things. Although Android users can see if an AirTag is nearby through a dedicated app, you'll need an iPhone to get the most out of the trackers.
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Though Marie Antoinette would be hard-pressed to care, the French Revolution of 1789 set its sights on more than simply toppling the monarchy. Revolutionaries sought to break the nation free from its past, specifically from the clutches of the Catholic church, and point France towards a more glorious and prosperous future. They did so, in part, by radically transforming their measurements of the passage of time.
Throughout the 18th century, most French folks were Catholic as that was the only religion allowed to be openly practiced in the country, and had been since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. As such, the nation had traditionally adhered to the 12-month Gregorian calendar — itself based on even older, sexagesimal (6-unit) divisible systems adapted from the Babylonians and Egyptians — while French clocks cycled every 60 minutes and seconds.
But if there was little reason to continue using the established chronology system aside from tradition, the revolutionaries figured, why not transmute it into a more rational, scientifically-backed method, just as the revolution itself sought to bring stability and new order to French society as a whole? And what better system to interpose than that of the decimal, which already governed the nation’s weights and measures. So, while it wasn’t busy abolishing the privileges of the First and Second Estate, eliminating the church’s power to levy taxes or just drowning nonjuring Catholic priests en masse, France’s neophyte post-revolution government set about reforming the realm’s calendars and clocks.
The concept of decimal time, wherein a day is broken down into multiples of 10, was first suggested more than thirty years prior when French mathematician, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, argued in 1754, “It would be very desirable that all divisions, for example of the livre, the sou, the toise, the day, the hour, etc. would be from tens into tens. This division would result in much easier and more convenient calculations and would be very preferable to the arbitrary division of the livre into twenty sous, of the sou into twelve deniers, of the day into twenty-four hours, the hour into sixty minutes, etc.”
By the eve of the Revolution, the idea had evolved into a year split into 12 months of 30 days apiece, their names inspired by crops and the prevailing weather in Paris during their occurrences. That there are 365 days in a year is an immutable fact dictated by the movement of the Earth around our local star. So, 12 months of 30 days apiece resulted in 5 days (6 in a leap year!) left over. These, the revolutionaries reserved for national holidays.
Each week was divided into 10 days, every day was split into 10 equal hours, those were split into 100 minutes, with each minute divided into 100 seconds (roughly 1.5 times longer than conventional minutes) and each second into 1000 “tierces.” Individual tierces could also be divided into 1000 even tinier units, called “quatierces.” The implementation of tierces would also lead to the creation of a new unit of length, called the “half-handbreadth,” which is the distance the twilight zone travels along the equator over the course of one tierce, and equal to one billionth of the planet’s circumference — around 4 centimeters.
Decimal time was formally adopted by National Convention decree in 1793, “The day, from midnight to midnight, is divided into ten parts, each part into ten others, and so forth until the smallest measurable portion of duration.” As such, midnight would be denoted as 00:00 while noon would be 5:00.
Public Domain
At midnight of the autumn equinox on September 22nd of that year, France’s Gregorian calendar ushered in 1st Vendémiaire Year II of the French Republican calendar. From there on, every new year would begin at midnight of the Autumn equinox, as observed by the Paris Observatory.
“The new calendar was based on two principles,” a 2017 exhibition at the International Museum of Watches, Looking for Noon at Five O’Clock, noted. “That the Republican year should coincide with the movement of the planets, and that it should measure time more accurately and more symmetrically by applying the decimal system wherever possible. Non-religious, it advocated a rational approach and honored the seasons and work in the fields.”
The main advantage of a decimal time system is that, since the base used to divide the time is the same as the one used to represent it, the whole time representation can be handled as a single string.
On one hand, this system offered the clear advantage that both the numerical base used to define the time and the numerical base used to divide it are the same number. For example, quick, how many seconds are there in three hours? The answer, most people will Google, is 10,800 — 60 seconds/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 3 hours. In decimal time, you simply get 30,000 — 3 hours x 10,000 seconds/hour.
However, due to an oversight in its otherwise logical design on account of gaps in astronomical knowledge, the Republican calendar struggled to properly accommodate leap years. “The four-year period, after which the addition of a day is usually necessary, is called the Franciade in memory of the revolution which, after four years of effort, led France to republican government, National Convention decreed. “The fourth year of the Franciade is called Sextile.”
Problem is that leap years, if we’re counting new years by midnights on the autumnal equinox in Paris, don’t consistently happen every four years. By equinox measure, the first leap year of the Republican calendar would actually have to occur in year III while the leaps in years XV and XX would happen half a decade apart.
There were also more practical issues with swapping the nation’s chronology over to an entirely new system, like the fact that people already had perfectly good clocks which they’d have to replace, were decimal time to remain in effect. It was also wildly unpopular with the working class who would only receive one day of rest out of 10 using the Republican calendar (plus a half day on the fifth), rather than the existing Gregorian one-day-in-seven, not to mention that the ten-day week played havoc with traditional Sunday religious services, seeing as how Sunday would cease to exist.
Overall, the idea simply failed to capture public support — despite edicts demanding the creation of decimal-based clocks — and was officially suspended on April 7th, 1795. The French then took a quick crack at metric time, which similarly measured time’s passage in factors of ten but based its progression in conventional seconds (aka 1/86400th of a day). Of course all of these efforts were rendered moot when Napoleon declared himself emperor in 1804, made peace with the Vatican and reinstituted the Gregorian calendar, thereby relegating both the Republican calendar and decimal time to the dustbin of history. The lesson here being, unless you’ve TNG’d yourself into a temporal loop, don’t try to fix what isn’t already broken, especially when it might earn you a trip to the guillotine.
Last November, Amazon notified customers that it would stop accepting Visa credit cards in the UK as of January 19th, 2022, blaming the high fees Visa charges for credit card transactions. Now, the company has backtracked on that, telling customers via email that it will continue accepting Visa cards, at least for the time being.
"The expected change regarding the use of Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk will no longer take place on January 19," an Amazon spokesperson told Engadget. " We are working closely with Visa on a potential solution that will enable customers to continue using their Visa credit cards on Amazon.co.uk."
The dispute has been simmering for a while, with Amazon previously accusing Visa of charging high credit card transaction fees, and Visa saying that Amazon was "threatening to restrict consumer choice in the future." Both companies, global leaders of their respective industries, previously said that they were attempting to work towards a solution.
Amazon didn't elaborate further on its statement but also didn't set another deadline — so presumably UK buyers will be able to use their Visa cards for the foreseeable future.
If you've been waiting for a sale to buy one of Amazon's Fire HD tablets, today might be the day. You can currently pick up some key products on sale, with the best deals on the Fire HD 8 and Fire HD 8 Plus, available at all-time low discounts of 50 percent. The Fire 7 is also back to its Black Friday pricing, and kids tablets have big discounts as well.
We gave the 2020 Fire HD 8 a decent 81 score in our Engadget review, thanks to the new design, switch to USB-C charging, long battery life and solid performance. The Fire HD 8 Plus, however, offers a bit more RAM (3GB instead of 2GB), along with a faster processor and wireless charging support. Both models have 32GB of storage that's expandable via microSD.
The Fire 7 is more of a budget option that comes with a 7-inch IPS display, 2MP front- and rear-cameras and hands-free Alexa controls. It also offers roughly seven hours of battery life, depending on what you're doing. The biggest drawback is the lack of Google apps, but at $35, it's great as a couch device for reading, checking social media and browsing the web.
If you're shopping for the younger set, meanwhile, the Fire 7 Kids Pro tablet is on sale for $50, or half off the regular $100 price. That price makes it an excellent budget kids option, thanks to the decent specs (a quad-core processor, dual cameras and expandable storage), along with the Kids+ content that includes educational content from National Geographic, Rabbids Coding, LEGO and others.
Finally, the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro Tablet, with similar features to the Fire HD 7 Kids Pro but a slightly larger screen, is available for $80, for a savings of 43 percent from the regular $140 price. Finally, the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro tablet comes with a 10.1-inch 1080p display, dual cameras, USB-C and 3GB of RAM. That model is available for $140 instead of $200, a discount of $60 or 30 percent.
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Meta recently said that it would implement end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger and Instagram by 2023, despite strong opposition from governments in the UK and elsewhere. However, the UK Home Office is reportedly planning an ad campaign to mobilize public opinion against end-to-end encryption using what critics called "scaremongering" tactics, according to a report from Rolling Stone.
The UK government plans to team up with charities and law enforcement agencies on a public relations blitz created by M&C Saatchi advertising agency, the report states. The aim of the campaign is to relay a message that end-to-end encryption could hamper child exploitation online.
"We have engaged M&C Saatchi to bring together the many organizations who share our concerns about the impact end-to-end encryption would have on our ability to keep children safe," a Home Office spokesperson told Rolling Stone in a statement. The government has allocated £534,000 ($730,500) for the blitz, according to a letter sent from the Home Office in response to a freedom of information request.
The campaign may include elements designed to make the public "uneasy," according to a slideshow designed to help it recruit non-profit coalition partners. That includes a proposed stunt with adult and child actors placed in a glass box as it fades to black. It also involves a "social media activation where we ask parents to write to Mark [Zuckerberg] via their Facebook status."
One slide noted that "most of the public have never heard" of end-to-end encryption, meaning they can "be easily swayed" on the subject. It also states that the government "must not start a privacy vs safety debate."
Privacy advocates called the plans "scaremongering" and said that a lack of end-to-end encryption could have the opposite intended effect. "Without strong encryption, children are more vulnerable online than ever. Encryption protects personal safety and national security… what the government is proposing puts everyone at risk," Internet Society's Robin Wilton told Rolling Stone.
Apple's "Noise Cancellation" accessibility feature has been a staple on past iPhones, but may have been permanently removed from the iPhone 13 series, 9to5Mac has reported. The feature is designed to "reduce ambient noise on phone calls when you are holding the receiver to your ear," a feature that can help make calls easier to hear.
"Phone Noise Cancellation is not available on iPhone 13 models, which is why you do not see this option in [the Accessibility] settings," Apple support told one of 9to5Mac's readers. When the reader asked for clarification, the support team confirmed that the feature is "not supported."
Questions about noise cancellation came up on Reddit and Apple support pages shortly after the phone went on sale, with readers noticing that it was no longer available on the Accessibility page. The feature is still available with iOS 15 on past iPhone models, but is nowhere to be found on the iPhone 13.
"Noise Cancellation" normally uses an iPhone's camera microphone to detect and remove ambient noise around you, so you can more easily hear the other person on a phone or FaceTime call — something that can be valuable for the hard of hearing. The issue only applies if you use the handset by itself without, say, Apple's AirPods noise-cancelling earphones. (It does not affect what others hear; for that, Apple introduced the Voice Isolation feature with iOS 15.)
Apple has yet to officially confirm that the feature has been permanently removed on iPhone 13 devices; so far, the only word about it has come indirectly from Apple Support. As such, Engadget has reached out to Apple for further clarification.
Subaru is still new to EVs, but that isn't stopping it from unveiling more ambitious projects. Electrekreports the automaker has introduced two concept EVs at the Tokyo Auto Salon, including its first all-electric race car. The STI E-RA Concept hints at Subaru's upcoming track vehicle with 1,073HP of total power from its four Yamaha motors, extensive downforce and all-wheel drive mated to a "unique" torque vectoring system that maximizes grip and stability.
While the 60kWh battery is relatively small, Subaru is confident the E-RA can thrive on the track. It's hoping to set a Nürburgring lap time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds at some point in 2023. That's not as quick as VW's ID.R (6 minutes 5 seconds), but it's comfortably ahead of road cars like Tesla's Model S Plaid (7 minutes 35 seconds). The company plans to test the E-RA at Japanese racing circuits later in 2022.
Subaru
The brand also unveiled a Solterra STI Concept (at middle) that, as the name implies, is a sportier version of the upcoming crossover. Subaru didn't discuss under-body changes, but the upgraded Solterra has a roof spoiler, skirt spoilers and other customizations to signal its performance ambitions.
However much the E-RA represents Subaru's motorsport plans, it's also serving as a declaration of intent. Like VW's racer, it shows the company is serious about EVs and can produce high-performance cars in addition to everyday people haulers. The challenge is to translate lessons learned from concepts like this to regular vehicles. Subaru is late to EVs compared even to incumbents like VW, Mercedes and GM, and it may need to move quickly if it wants to counter the electrification efforts of its rivals.
Apple device users appear to be vulnerable to a significant browser privacy flaw. According to 9to5Mac, FingerprintJS has disclosed an exploit that lets attackers obtain your recent browser history, and even some Google account info, from Safari 15 across all supported platforms as well as third-party browsers on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. The IndexedDB framework (used to store data on many browsers) is violating the "same-origin" policy that prevents documents and scripts from one location (such as a domain or protocol) from interacting with content from another, letting appropriately coded websites deduce Google info from signed-in users as well as histories from open tabs and windows.
The flaw only compromises the names of the databases rather than the content itself. However, this would still be enough for a malicious site owner to grab your Google username, discover your profile picture and otherwise learn more about you. The history could also be used to piece together a rudimentary profile of the sites you like. Private browsing won't defeat the exploit, FingerprintJS said.
We've asked Apple for comment. FingerprintJS said it reported the issue on November 28th, however, and that Apple hadn't yet addressed it with security patches honoring same-origin policy. Until then, the only solution may be to either use a third-party browser on Macs or block all JavaScript, neither of which is necessarily an option.
