Patreon doesn't let creators offer crypto coins for the sake of profit, but that might change before long. TechCrunchreports Patreon executives Jack Conte and Julian Gutman said the company was "evaluating" the use of crypto, including a previously hinted-at possibility of allowing "creator coins" that fans can buy to show support. You could invest in creators and reap rewards if they hit the big time, or access special content reserved for coin owners.
Conte wouldn't say if Patreon had staff devoted to crypto projects, but did say the company was "thinking about it." The company had discussed the possibility of allowing creator coins during an online September discussion, but it was sidelined as the company grappled with the implications of Mastercard's tougher adult content standards.
Gutman added that Patreon was "interested" in studying the potential benefits of NFTs and related technologies for creators looking to sustain a business. NFTs have boosted the value of digital art, sometimes leading to sales worth millions, but there are also widespread concerns about the highly speculative nature of the market and the blockchain-based technology's environmental impact.
It wouldn't be surprising if Patreon embraced coins, NFTs or both. Patreon has fared well despite early pandemic jitters and raised $90 million just a year ago, but there's little doubt the service is trying to court as many creators as possible. A new stance on crypto might entice content producers who currently have to go elsewhere if they want to dabble in the technology.
This week, we tested out new flagship smartphones, high-powered laptops and much-improved earbuds. Devindra Hardawar reviewed the latest 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros and reports back that they provide almost everything one could want out of a powerful laptop. Billy Steele spent time listening to the third-generation AirPods and concluded they sound much better than the previous version. And Cherlynn Low used Google’s Pixel 6 and 6 Pro and found that the camera-heavy handsets have a lot more to offer, including a great starting price.
Devindra Hardawar says the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros are precisely what media professionals have been waiting for: speedy M1 Pro and Max processors, a comfortable keyboard, serious battery life and great speakers. They also feature most of the crucial ports MacBooks have been missing for years, including (finally!) an SD card reader, though the laptops are thicker and heavier as a result. And of course, all that comes with a high starting price of $1,999.
Devindra was particularly impressed by the Liquid Retina XDR displays, which come close to 4K resolutions, and have mini-LED backlighting to produce up to 1,600 nits of brightness. He was also pleased to find support for 120Hz refresh rates, and by the benchmark testing in which both MacBook Pros blew away competing Windows PCs. However, while the laptops were able to speedily convert a 4K video clip to 1080p, Devindra doesn't think they'd make the best gaming machines — trying to load Borderlands 3 produced an unplayable mess. Overall though, he says these computers have practically everything one, especially a creative professional, would want in a powerful notebook — as long as you can stomach the price tag.
Apple’s latest AirPods have been almost completely redesigned from the previous version; the buds themselves have a new look, courtesy of the contoured shape which reduces weight and features a tapered silhouette and an angle to increase comfort. Billy Steele says the company’s efforts to build better AirPods have paid off: the new buds are more comfortable and and have much better audio quality, with bigger and more immersive sound that remained open and airy. That’s thanks to a custom driver paired with a high-dynamic-range amplifier, as well as the new H1 chip and the inward facing mic. Billy says these changes made the AirPods something he actively wanted to listen to music with.
The new AirPods also have an IPX4 rating so they’ll survive sweaty workouts or small splashes. They can also detect skin which, combined with the built-in accelerometer, makes for more accurate pausing and extends battery life. The new chip means you can listen to tracks in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music, and the spatial audio is available with dynamic head tracking to change the position of the audio when you turn your head. However, the latest AirPods still lack active noise cancellation and Transparency mode as these features are still reserved for the pricier AirPods Pro. While Billy acknowledges that these earbuds aren’t for everyone, he says they continue to offer Apple users features that are well integrated with iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Cherlynn Low says the newest Google phones — the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro — are the most intriguing phones that the company has made in years. Featuring the first Google mobile processor, Tensor, the two handsets also have improved camera hardware, lovely OLED screens, speedy refresh rates (120Hz for the 6 Pro, 90Hz for the 6), and decent speakers. Cherlynn says the best feature is the surprisingly low starting price — only $599 — which makes some of the drawbacks more forgivable.
One of the issues she had with the phones was the laggy under-screen fingerprint sensor, which requires the display to be on before it unlocked — a process that she says doesn’t need to have two steps. She was more impressed by the new voice keyboard, which did an excellent job of transcribing speech, and the additional camera features. The sensors are sharper and bigger with larger pixels, producing bright, clean photos — and special camera features, like Magic Eraser and Face Unblur, give users a lot of control over their photos. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro excelled in our battery tests, too, lasting 20.5 hours and 17 hours, respectively. Overall, Cherlynn calls the handsets a superb return to form, showing off Google’s strengths in the software and photography departments.
You'd think global supply shortages would hit Apple's tech products the hardest, but that's apparently not the case. As The New York Timesreports, Apple's most backordered new release is its $19 Polishing Cloth. Order the microfiber cloth from the company store as of this writing and you'll wait 10 to 12 weeks — in other words, you won't get your Apple-branded polishing experience until January 2022 at the earliest. You could buy a new MacBook Pro and wait another two months to (officially) wipe smudges off the screen.
It's not clear what prompted the backlog, but it might be sheer popularity. An anonymous Apple official talking to The Times said the company wasn't surprised by high demand, and that the cloth was both specially designed (it was originally meant for the nano-texture glass on the Pro Display XDR) and particularly effective.
It's no secret that you can find far, far less expensive alternatives if you're cleaning a regular screen. Amazon is selling a six-pack of MagicFiber cloths for $9, and even the pricer options tend to offer better value. However, the shortfall illustrates both the cachet of the official product and the sheer range of supply constraints affecting tech, sometimes in unexpected ways. If you can't even count on getting a polishing cloth in a timely fashion, you know the industry is struggling with broad supply issues.
Facebook made it pretty clear that it's focusing on the metaverse when it rebranded itself as Meta, and its latest acquisition is part of that effort. Jason Rubin, the company's VP of Metaverse Content has revealed that Meta is acquiring Within, the creator of immersive virtual reality workout app Supernatural for Oculus Quest headsets. A rep for Within previously described Supernatural to Engadget as "part Beat Saber, part Dance Dance Revolution, part Guitar Hero with your whole body.
In a separate announcement (via TechCrunch), Within CEO Chris Milk and Head of fitness Leanne Pedante said that its coaches, choreographers and managers will continue being part of the team. They'll work on VR fitness experiences for Supernatural independently under Meta's Reality Labs. While Within will have to answer to its new parent company going forward, Milk's and Pedante's statement says the the acquisition will give them access to more resources, including more music, more features and more social experiences.
In Supernatural, you'll have to hit colored orbs flying at you from its various VR environments using your controllers. The balls will shatter if you hit them with enough force, but they'll only float away if you don't — you'll get scored at the end based on how you do. Supernatural has a 30-day free trial period, after which it'll cost you $19 a month for continued access.
Vaccine misinformation has been pervasive issue on Facebook for years, and it wasn't until earlier this year that the website finally introduced policies that would address the problem. Now, the social network has expanded those policies and its COVID-19 vaccination efforts to include kids shortly after the FDA authorized the emergency use of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children ages five to eleven.
In the coming weeks, it will send in-feed English and Spanish reminders to users in the US that the COVID-19 vaccine is now available for kids. Those reminders will also include a link that'll help users find the nearest vaccination site. Perhaps, more importantly, it will expand its anti-vaccine misinformation policies to remove claims that COVID-19 vaccines for kids do not exist and that the vaccine for children is untested. It will also remove any claim that COVID-19 vaccines can kill or seriously harm kids, that they're not effective for children at all and that anything other than a COVID-19 vaccine can inoculate children against the virus.
Facebook says its fight against vaccine misinformation is part of an ongoing effort in partnership with the CDC, WHO and other health authorities. It promises to keep on updating its policies and ban any new claim about the COVID-19 vaccine for children that will emerge in the future. The website, which now operates under its parent company Meta, says it has removed more than 20 million pieces of content from Facebook and Instagram since the beginning of the pandemic. As of August 2021, it has also banned 3,000 accounts, groups and pages for repeatedly breaking its health misinformation policies.
Prepare to toss a coin to your favorite witcher. Netflix has shared the first full trailer for season two of The Witcher ahead of its December 17th debut. Unsurprisingly, the clip sees Geralt fighting plenty of monsters, including vampires, gargoyles and even a leshen at one point toward the end. It also reveals plenty of details about the story arc of the show’s sophomore season, teasing an escalating war between Nilfgaard and the Northern Kingdoms, Ciri’s training at Kaer Morhen and the return of Jaskier.
After the show’s initial success, a second season isn’t the only piece of Witcher content Netflix has in the pipeline. The streaming giant released The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, an animated prequel film starring Geralt’s mentor Vesemir, earlier this year. It also recently greenlit a third season of the show, announced a second animated movie and a “kids and family” series.
Since 2019, Engadget has recommended the SteelSeries Arctis 7 as one of the best gaming headsets you can buy. At this point, it’s iconic but with a design that hasn’t changed much since 2016, it recently started to show its age. Thankfully, SteelSeries just announced the Arctis 7+ and Arctis 7P+.
The tweaks the company has made are modest, but they’re ones current Arctis 7 owners will appreciate. Most notably, SteelSeries has replaced the finicky micro USB port you used to charge the headset with a more modern USB-C connection. Using the new port, it’s possible to get three hours of uptime after 15 minutes of charging.
SteelSeries
On that note, battery life is also improved. SteelSeries claims you can get up to 30 hours of gameplay on a single charge, up from the approximately 24 hours you got from the previous version. As for the differences between the 7+ and 7P+, there aren’t many. You can buy the latter in both black and white colorways where the former is only available in black. Additionally, the 7P+ includes support for the PlayStation 4 and PS5’s 3D Audio functionality. That said, you can use both headsets with pretty much any system or device other than Xbox consoles.
The Arctis 7+ and Arctis 7P+ are available to buy today from the SteelSeries website. They’ll both set you back $170. That’s an increase from the $150 MSRP of Arctis 7 and 7P, but what's an extra $20 when you don't have to deal with micro USB anymore.
Tesla is recalling 2,791 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles over concerns that their front suspension lateral link fasteners may loosen, potentially shifting the wheel alignment and increasing the risk of a crash. The affected vehicles are 2019, 2020 and 2021 versions of the Model 3, and 2020 and 2021 editions of the Model Y.
Tesla has notified the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the recall and plans to mail notification letters to affected owners on December 24th. The company will tighten or replace the fasteners free of charge. The number for this recall is SB-21-31-003.
This is far from the first recall on Tesla's books, and in the grand scheme of things, it's a small one. Tesla has issued a handful of recalls this year alone, including one in February that affected 135,000 vehicles in the US and another in June affecting 6,000 US vehicles. German regulators issued an additional recall of 12,300 Model X EVs in February of this year, citing trim-adhesive concerns. That issue sounded eerily similar to one that led to a US recall of more than 9,000 cars in November 2020.
Amazon owns a 20 percent stake in electric transport startup Rivian, according to a recent SEC disclosure spotted by Bloomberg. As of September 30th, the company said the stake was valued at $3.8 billion, up from $2.7 billion at the end of 2020. That Amazon should own a fifth of Rivian is not surprising. In 2019, the retailer led a $700 million investment round in the automaker, contributing about $440 million to that total.
That same year, it announced as part of its 2040 climate pledge it would purchase 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian. The first of those EVs, a cutesy van, began making deliveries in Los Angeles at the start of the year. Amazon hopes to have 10,000 of its Rivian EVs on the road by the end of 2022.
As you might imagine, that has put pressure on Rivian to deliver for its biggest customer. Per Bloomberg, the company has prioritized manufacturing vans for Amazon at the expense of its consumer vehicles like the R1T and R1S. The former was supposed to debut in 2020, but following a series of pandemic-related delays, the first customer-ready vehicle only rolled out of the company’s Normal, Illinois factory this past September.
Valorant players are getting another hero to use in Riot's free-to-play shooter. As described by character producer John Goscicki, Chamber plays the "gentleman assassin" role, a Sentinel-class character who "bunkers down, and holds a location by getting frags.” He can do this through a skill and weapon set that includes a trap that scans for enemies, a heavy pistol and a sniper rifle that can take enemies out with one perfectly-placed shot. Chamber will go live in Valorant with Patch 3.10 on Nov. 16.
Riot Games
Given that his abilities are focused around "highly lethal, pinpoint accuracy," as Goscicki says, they wanted his style to match. "A person like that would care about the finer things in life as well—from the cut of his vest, to the color of the threading, and how shoes would bring the whole outfit together." If that description speaks to you, Chamber might be an agent worth trying out.
That patch comes a few weeks after Riot is set to release the Valorant Episode 3, Act III Battlepass, which goes live on November 2nd and will be available for 10 weeks. It comes with five free and nine paid "Marquee Items," and the pack itself costs 1,000 Valorant Points, the game's in-game currency. According to Riot associate art director Sean Marino, the Battlepass is focused on bringing some fall holiday vibes to the game. Given that one of the items Marino mentioned is meant to fit in with Halloween, it's a little bit of a bummer that this doesn't launch until after the holiday. But hey, why limit Halloween to just one month?
