All Twitter users can now remove a follower without having to block them. The company started testing this option last month, and starting today, everyone will have access to it. To quietly stop someone from seeing your tweets in their feed, go to the Followers tab on your profile, click the three-dot menu next to the user in question and select the "Remove this follower" option.

This is part of Twitter's efforts to reduce harassment on the platform. Blocking someone you don't want to follow you could lead to retaliation from that person via their allies or their secondary accounts after they find out. Cutting them in this fashion and muting them will mean they're none the wiser that they're out of the loop.

This method won't prevent someone you boot from your followers list from seeing your public tweets. Only blocking them or making your account private will do that. Elsewhere, Twitter is testing a Safety Mode, which automatically blocks accounts that use “potentially harmful language.” It's also looking into more ways to filter and limit replies, so it seems the company is making its anti-harassment efforts a bigger priority.

15 years ago, if you were writing a document, chances are you were doing it in Microsoft Word. Part of the company’s wildly successful Office suite, Word was the de-facto option for drafting text, whether you were an author, an office worker, a student, a teacher… you get the point.

But on October 11th, 2006, Google officially launched Google Docs and Spreadsheets in beta. As with everything Google, Docs and Sheets were cloud-based applications that also let you collaborate with others in real time. It’s easy to forget now, but this was completely different from how most people worked on documents at the time.

I was in a different career 15 years ago, one that required me to work on lots of spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations that were accessed in a shared network drive. Submitting them to others for edits and notes was a fraught process. Making sure you had the most current version of the document usually involved six-digit numbers representing the last date it was modified, initials to note who had checked it out, and messy notes added to the end until you landed on something insanely convoluted like “April_Report_051504_NI_final_final_reallyfinal.doc.”

15 years later, I’m writing this story in a Google Doc shared with my editors; they can make as many changes as they want to the finished parts of the draft as I keep typing away here and nothing will get lost. Collaborative work is a lot better than it used to be, and Google Docs is a big part of that – but it wasn’t always smooth sailing to get here.

Google Docs began as a “hacked together experiment,” its creator Sam Schillace said in an interview with The Verge in 2013. Eight years earlier, he created a tool called Writely, a web-based text editing platform. Google bought the company in March of 2006. According to Schillace, 90 percent of the company was using Writely only a month later. “When we went to Google, Writely was internally adopted very quickly,” he said. Barely seven months after that, Google officially released Docs and Sheets at the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. As with most Google products at the time, it was released in beta for free.

TechCrunch / Google

Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t quite up to par with what Microsoft was offering with Office. The text editor was, comparatively speaking, very simple. But more importantly, Google Docs only worked when you had an active internet connection. While good broadband was fairly common in workplaces and universities, it was far less easy to find when you ventured out into the world. If you wanted to get some work while traveling, say on an airplane, Google Docs was a non-starter.

It didn’t take Google long to realize it needed to come up with a way to sync documents to a computer for offline access. In May of 2007, at its first “worldwide developer day,” the company introduced Google Gears. Gears was an open-source project and browser extension for Mac, Windows and Linux that would help web apps work with no internet connection. While the project was meant for any developer to use, using it for Google Docs made perfect sense.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most stable tool. In late 2009, Google stopped development on Gears in favor of using the capabilities afforded by HTML 5. But even though Google continued supporting applications that used Gears, a technology transition probably didn’t do the company any favors in getting Docs and its broader app suite adopted in businesses and education institutions.

Around this time, Google was experimenting with a variety of ways to push collaboration and communication forward — Docs was just one of the success stories. There were failures though, the most high-profile of which was Google Wave — an ambitious combination of instant messaging, email, documents, multimedia and more. It was hyped by the tech press, so much that Google Wave invites were being sold on eBay. But interest dropped off quickly, in large part because it felt like even less of a finished product than most of Google’s “beta” launches.

Google / Engadget

Google didn’t do a great job explaining exactly what problem this new tool was designed to solve, and the company pulled the plug in 2010, after only a year. But many of the things Google experimented with in Wave ended up living on in other places. Indeed, right around the time Google ended development on Wave, the company added chat to Google Docs, letting people who had the same file open discuss what they were working on right alongside the content itself.

Google Docs clearly evolved past its early struggles, though. Google put a somewhat surprising amount of focus on the product over the last decade-plus, incrementally iterating and improving it at a steady pace. That’s the hallmark of products Google seems to really believe in. It’s the same way the company treated Android, Chrome (both the browser and OS), Drive, Photos, and, of course, Search and Gmail.

As internet access has become more and more widespread, the fact that Docs (like most of Google’s products) works best online was less of a hindrance. Not having to worry about saving a document took a while to get used to, but it’s something that we take for granted now — if your browser crashes, whatever you were working on should still be there waiting for you in the cloud.

Perhaps the biggest endorsement of Google’s cloud-first strategy came in 2010, when Microsoft took its first steps towards bringing Office applications online. For a long time, though, Google’s suite of apps were better-suited to the cloud. For example, you couldn’t have multiple people working on the same Office document until late 2013, something that was built into Google Docs from day one. Apple also followed Google’s lead, bringing its iWork apps online in 2013 and eventually enabling simultaneous collaboration as well.

While Office remains dominant in the workplace, it’s fair to say that Google gave Microsoft its first real competition in many years. Google has some giant customers, like Salesforce, Whirlpool, Twitter and Spotify. And Google’s apps, combined with inexpensive Chromebooks and its education platform, have made the company a force in the K-12 space as well as in higher education.

As for the next 15 years, it’s all but assured that collaborative and remote working will continue to be hugely important. That was clear before COVID-19, and the last 18 months have basically blown up the notion that everyone needs to go to an office. For a good idea of where collaborative work is going, consider Microsoft’s open-source Fluid framework. First announced in May of 2019, Fluid is meant to remove the barriers between different file formats and make it easy to pull in content from a wide variety of sources. Microsoft described it as a way to share atomized components of data across multiple files — so if you’re updating a spreadsheet in one document, you can link to that content in another file and it’ll automatically reflect those changes.

Dropbox hasn’t come up with its own “atomized components” of documents, but its Paper app works in a similar fashion. They’re collaborative like Google Docs, but they support a wide range of content plug-ins, so you can embed YouTube videos, Google Calendar elements, Figma documents, to-do lists, Trello lists, and even entire Google Docs.

Microsoft has been deliberate about developing Fluid, taking small steps since its initial release. Earlier this year, the company announced that some Fluid components would work in its communications platform Teams. I think that content moving outside of strict platforms like Google Docs or Microsoft Office into all the other places that we do work is going to be another important step forward.

That’s already happened to some degree. For years now, Dropbox has supported creating, sharing, and editing Microsoft Office documents right inside its own app and website, and it later added similar support for Google Docs as well. And apps like Slack have a host of integrations for things like Google Drive and Trello, though it’s not clear how widely used or essential they are to a Slack workflow. (I mostly just drop links to Google Docs I need edited.)

Somewhat ironically, as the barriers between content and file types fall away and more people do work in virtual spaces like Teams and Slack, Google’s vision for Wave looks to be rather prescient. The notion of a space for a project or team that encompasses all of its important elements, be they written documents, spreadsheets, images, videos or any other kind of content seems to be where we’re headed. But despite the fact that Google (and the rest of the industry) are moving back towards models that remind us of what Wave attempted, there’s still a missing piece in Google’s strategy.

That piece is messaging, something Google has struggled with, well, for about as long as Google has existed. As exhaustively detailed by Ars Technica, Google has never been able to stick with a coherent messaging plan for consumers or businesses. At some point, Google Chat (née Hangouts) could have been a solid Slack competitor, as well as the web that connects all the content people work on, but the company missed the boat as Slack solidified its dominance over the past five years. Even though Google Workspace has a huge user base, it hasn’t made inroads in the messaging side — which is what pulls a modern workplace together.

That said, Google’s Smart Canvas (announced at I/O this year) could be its own version of Fluid, a way to unify disparate forms of content and communication all in one place. From what we’ve seen so far, Smart Canvas has various “building blocks” that you can pull all into a single canvas — like a Meet call alongside a Google Doc for taking notes and a to-do list to assign items to team members. It’s only rolling out on a limited basis to paying Google Workspace customers, but it’s definitely worth watching to see how it evolves.

No one can really say what other cultural workplace shifts, like those brought on by COVID-19, will happen in the next 15 years. And those shifts are probably what will drive the most significant changes in products meant for work.

This post keeps spoilers to the bare minimum since the show will not air until October 28th.

While Star Trek certainly has its share of young fans, it’s never been specifically for the kids. Sure, there was the animated show back in the ‘70s, but that was basically a continuation of the original 1966 series. The newest program, Prodigy, is designed with kids in mind — especially those who might know nothing about Star Trek.

Though the show won’t show up on Paramount+ until the end of the month, fans got a sneak peek at the first episode, “Lost & Found,” during this past weekend's New York Comic Con. It introduces to our core cast of characters, a diverse group of aliens trapped on a distant mining colony and forced to dig in search of a mysterious prize. It’s a pretty grim scenario for a kid’s show, but one that won’t stick for long — this is Star Trek, after all, and part of the franchise’s ethos is exploration.

To keep the series as newbie-friendly as possible, the connections to the wider Trek universe are kept to a minimum. We don’t even know what species our protagonist, Dal, is. The rest of the cast is filled out by aliens that are either new to us or haven’t gotten a lot of screen time in the past. And the Federation is largely unknown here. Not that it isn’t mentioned a few times, but that our group of former prisoners have no idea what that means. Long-time fans will be excited to watch them learn all about it, while new fans will get to take that journey of discovery with them.

It’s that sense of wonder that will keep the show firmly in tone with the franchise, even as its new setting and animation style evoke prior science fiction programs like Star Wars: Rebels and Farscape. Star Wars: Rebels was also intended as a kid’s show, but its role in filling in details about the rise of the Rebel Alliance and sense of pathos also made it an enjoyable watch for adults. While older Trekkies will probably want to keep up with Prodigy for those ties to the greater continuity, the action sequences are solid and the initial plot line is serious enough to keep newcomer adults engaged. It’s a good introduction to the franchise for both kids and grownups alike, something sorely needed when there’s over 800 episodes to trawl through.

Nickelodeon

Prodigy is computer-animated by Eye Animation Productions, part of CBS Television Studios. According to Nickelodeon and Paramount Animation president Ramsey Naito, CG was chosen for being the “most immersive approach,” and that director Ben Hibon’s vision for it had a lot of soul. The show adopts a blocky angular style similar to Rebels but the edges are smoother and the color palette is more expansive. Even when things are grim, it’s still a visual treat in terms of how things are shaded. The planet is a full spectrum of browns and reds, while space isn’t just black and white; it’s purple and blue and pink with an array of glittering stars. It’s a cinematic place you want to explore.

Nickelodeon

And, of course, our tool for exploration is the USS Protostar, a lost Starfleet vessel that the characters unearth in their digging. What exactly is the ship, and how did it end up on this depressing mining colony? Those are questions for the long haul. Some may however be answered by the vessel’s “help desk,” a hologram of Kathryn Janeway. She doesn’t have a huge part to play in the series premiere, which is good because it means she can’t draw attention away from the introduction of the main cast. Paramount+ did, at least, release a short clip starring Janeway to quench your thirst for the coffee-swilling captain.

During the New York Comic Con panel executive producers Dan and Kevin Hageman did share a few casting announcements. Voyager fans will be pleased to hear that Robert Beltran will be reprising Chakotay. It’s unknown if he’ll appear in the flesh or as another hologram, but we do know that he’s been promoted to captain in the time since his last appearance. Kids will probably be more excited by some of the other guest voices, like Hamilton’s Daveed Diggs as Tysess and The Good Place’s Jameela Jamil as Ascensia. These additional announcements also feel like a tip of the hat to Voyager fans, a show that saw its share of guest stars like The Rock. Prodigy will even bring back Jason Alexander, an actor who also appeared on Voyager, but will now appear in the new role of Doctor Noum.

Nickelodeon

There’s a lot about the show to be excited about, and what’s been revealed about Prodigy thus far is extremely promising. But as a middle-aged and long-time Star Trek fan, what got me the most in this premiere was when you get to see the Protostar finally fly. Its ascent from the planet was thrilling, but watching the characters react to seeing the stars for the first time… I might have shed a few tears. Star Trek is about exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations. Now we get to watch a whole new cast, one that had previously been abused and downtrodden, live out that dream. Even if we’ve left the confines of the Federation, the show’s heart is still firmly in place with its past.

Members of the Oversight Board will meet with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen as it investigates the company’s controversial “cross check” system.

“In light of the serious claims made about Facebook by Ms. Haugen, we have extended an invitation for her to speak to the Board over the coming weeks, which she has accepted,” the Oversight Board wrote in a statement. “Board members appreciate the chance to discuss Ms. Haugen’s experiences and gather information that can help push for greater transparency and accountability from Facebook through our case decisions and recommendations.”

In a statement, Haugen confirmed the upcoming meeting. “Facebook has lied to the board repeatedly, and I am looking forward to sharing the truth with them,” she wrote.

The board has also been pushing Facebook to provide more information about the program, in light of Haugen’s disclosures. “Cross check” is the internal designation used by the social network for high profile accounts, including celebrities, politicians and athletes. The company has said it’s meant to provide an extra level of scrutiny when those accounts might break the platform’s rules. But according to documents Haugen provided to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook often doesn’t review violations from these accounts, effectively allowing them to break its rules without consequences. In other cases, reviews are so delayed that rule-breaking content is viewed millions of times before it’s removed.

Crosscheck was also a central issue in the Oversight Board’s handling of Donald Trump’s Facebook suspension. The board had asked Facebook for more details about cross check, saying that the company’s rules “should apply to all users.” But Facebook said it was “not feasible” to provide additional info, even though Haugen’s disclosures suggested the company has been tracking problems related to the program.

Facebook didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company said last month, following The Wall Street Journal's reporting, that it had asked the board to provide recommendations on how to improve cross check. The Oversight Board will release its first transparency report later this month, which will provide an update on cross check, based on its discussions with Facebook officials and Haugen. The report will be the board’s first assessment of how the social network has responded to its policy recommendations.

With the F-150 Lightning set to debut early next year, Ford plans to employ a group of “Charge Angels” to ensure owners of its EVs can find reliable charging when they need it. In an interview with Automotive News, Ford EV lead Darren Palmer said technicians in specially-equipped Mustang Mach-Es will travel the US to test out charging stations where connected vehicle data and “angry social media posts” indicate they may not be working properly.

“All they’ll do all day long is go and check them to see where they fail and why,” Palmer told the outlet. “There are a lot of plugs out there, but some of them are old and they don’t have the quality or reliability we want. Over 99.5 percent of customers go into a charger and get a charge. We’re pleased about that. But a number less than that get a charge the first time they charge.”

The company is reportedly finalizing the details of the program but hopes to have the first group of Charge Angels out on the road by the end of the year. Either way, it’s a smart move for an automaker that has a network of approximately 63,000 chargers across the US but ultimately depends on companies like Electrify America and ChargePoint for that infrastructure.

Facebook has been making a big push into audio over the past several months. Now, it's bringing those features together. Users can access an Audio hub in Facebook's mobile app, from which they can access podcasts, live audio rooms and short clips.

The company has been quietly rolling out the hub on iOS and Android, as TechCrunch notes. All US users aged 18 and older should see the option in the Watch tab as of today.

Facebook initially launched live audio rooms, its Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces competitor, in July. It says that all verified public figures and creators can now host live audio rooms, not just those in the US. All Facebook groups will be able to run audio discussions too. The company is testing the option to create audio rooms on Android (it was an iOS-only feature until now) and you'll be able to listen to the conversations on desktop.

The short-form Soundbites audio clip feature is still in beta, though Facebook plans to roll it out more broadly in the US over the next several weeks. In addition, the company has been working on measures, such as tech that automatically flags harmful content, to detect and take action on audio that violates the Community Standards. Given Facebook's history as a breeding ground for misinformation, that'll be an important issue to address as the company pushes further into audio.

California could ban sales of some gas-powered devices, including lawn equipment, generators and pressure washers. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law over the weekend that orders regulators to prohibit the sale of small off-road engines.

The California Air Resources Board was already working on rules to that effect, but Newsom has given the agency deadlines for adopting and applying the regulations. The agency has until July 1st to adopt the rules. The regulations will apply to engines made on or after January 1st, 2024, or whenever is feasible in the state board's opinion — whichever is later. The law also stipulates that regulators will need to offer rebates to lower the cost of switching equipment. The latest state budget set aside $30 million to cover the costs.

The aim of the law is to reduce emissions. As the Associated Press notes, California brought in emission standards for those engines in 1990. Although emissions from cars have generally decreased over the last few decades, that hasn't necessarily been the case for small off-road engines.

State officials have said that a gas-powered leaf blower that's used for one hour emits the same level of pollution as a 2017 Toyota Camry that travels for around 1,100 miles. There are currently more than 16.7 million devices with small off-road engines in California — three million or so more than the number of passenger cars in the state.

California is tackling emissions from gas-powered engines on other fronts. Last year, the California Air Resources Board said all truck and van manufacturers will have to switch to electric versions by 2045. The state will also ban sales of new combustion engine cars and trucks by 2035. Many auto manufacturers are aiming to switch entirely to EVs by that time. Another zero-emissions rule for light-duty autonomous vehicles will come into effect starting in 2030.

There are already some electric pressure washers and lawn mowers on the market. Zero-emission generators might be harder to come by, though some companies have also attempted to make hydrogen-powered models.

Following multiple production delays, the latest Chevy Bolt EV recall is officially underway. Per Ars Technica, GM has started replacing the battery packs of affected vehicles. The automaker is reaching out to Bolt owners with cars manufactured “during specific build timeframes” first. Once you get your EV to a Chevy dealership, the replacement process should take approximately two days. Each new pack comes with an eight-year or 100,000-mile warranty.

Replacing the battery of every Chevy Bolt manufactured between 2017 and 2019 is expected to cost GM more than $1.8 billion. The fault that led to the fires that necessitated the recall stemmed from a pair of related issues. A problem with the original manufacturing process could cause the battery anodes in affected cars to tear and cathode-anode separators to fold. If both defects came up in the same battery, it would have a higher chance of catching fire.

"LG has implemented new manufacturing processes and has worked with GM to review and enhance its quality assurance programs to provide confidence in its batteries moving forward," GM said last month when it first detailed how it would go about replacing batteries. “LG will institute these new processes in other facilities that will provide cells to GM in the future.” 

GM will also start rolling out new diagnostic software in November for all Bolt EVs. The company says the firmware will help it prioritize the cars that need service sooner.

Google TV is about to make it easier for everyone in your household to maintain their own watchlists. If you already use the platform, you may know that more than one person can sign in with their Google Account. However, at the moment, Google TV will only generate recommendations for the primary account holder. That’s about to change.

Google is introducing support for personalized profiles, allowing everyone with a Google account in your household to maintain their own watchlists and Assistant settings. That also means they’ll be able to get their own content recommendations. Support for personalized accounts will start rolling out next month to Chromecast with Google TV in addition to supported sets from TCL and Sony.

With the introduction of accounts, Google is also enhancing the platform’s ambient mode. In addition to shortcuts for things like podcasts, music and photos, you’ll see glanceable cards that will include personalized information related to the weather, news and more. This feature will first be available only in the US. Lastly, if you’re a Philo TV subscriber, you’ll now see content from the service show up in Google TV’s Live and For you tabs. Separately from today's announcements, Google told Engadget the mobile remote app for Google TV will be available soon through the Google Home app on Android and iOS.

Gaze, if you will, upon the Xbox Series X. 

Aaron Souppouris / Engadget

It is a black video game console, with aggressively square edges. Its design connotes "serious video gaming." This is a video game console for Gamers, if you'll forgive all the baggage that comes with the word. 

Now, behold this Xbox Series X:

Microsoft

A bit of a different vibe. 

These new, garishly-colored Xbox Series X consoles and matching controllers go alongside the just-released Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, which seems to be a Smash Bros. style multiplayer battle between iconic characters from franchises including, Spongebob Squarepants, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Legend of Korra, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats and others. 

As is often the case with Microsoft's limited-edition consoles, these aren't actually for sale. To get your hands on the spot-on Spongebob Squareconsole, completely with his bulbous eyes gazing at you from the custom controller, you'll need to enter and win a sweepstakes by retweeting this tweet from the official Xbox account. The contest runs through October 24th.

While the TMNT console looks fine, the Spongebob one is particularly inspired in this writer's eyes. Given the fact that the Xbox Series X has a perfectly square bottom, there are few characters who fit the format better than Spongebob. Microsoft really should have given it a pair of little legs for a stand, though.