Wednesday, February 9, 2022

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Alleged crypto launderer Heather Morgan led a second life as the world's worst rapper

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 05:23 PM PST

Earlier today, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who allegedly attempted to launder more than 25,000 Bitcoins that were stolen as part of the 2016 hack of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. What was unclear to us at the time was that an even greater crime had played out across Morgan's social media pages: her rap career. 

Spotted by NBC reporter Kevin Collier, Morgan — who performed under the alias Razzlekhan — seemingly spent all of the time she was not allegedly shifting around $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency shooting rap videos, leaving precious little bandwidth to actually learn how to write or perform music in a pleasing way. On her YouTube page, can find Morgan's rap videos sprinkled in between unboxing clips and a review of 13 different kinds of aluminum-free deodorant. Morgan, the self-proclaimed "Crocodile of Wall Street," states that she experiences synesthesia, which results in "art" that "often resembles something between an acid trip and a delightful nightmare." 

We implore you to form your own opinion:

"Cutthroat Country," embedded above, provides an overview of Morgan's many talents as a rapper. Her delivery is tuneless, the bars are cringe and the accompanying music video isn't much better. But the best part is that Morgan seemingly implicates herself in the exact money laundering scheme she stands accused of carrying out. "Spearfish your password / all your funds transferred," she says in the 2:36 mark of the song.

But her magnum opus is perhaps "Versace Bedouin," a "rap anthem for misfits and weirdos":

"Always be a GOAT, not a god damn sheep," she raps at the start of song. "Spirit of a revolutionary, power of a dictator / love to be contrary, but I'm fly like a gator," she says later. What's striking about both videos are the low-budget production values on display. Morgan and her husband allegedly laundered billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin, and yet it looks like they shot the clips on a shoestring budget. 

We could say more about the videos, but we think YouTube user Gudi said it best. "The Man couldn't allow this much talent to roam the streets. RIP." Morgan and Lichtenstein face money laundering and conspiracy charges. If convicted, they face up to a maximum of 25 years in prison.

Apple to offer paid parental leave and more sick days to retail employees

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 04:01 PM PST

Apple will expand benefits for all of its retail employees in the US, beginning April 4th. Bloomberg reports the new benefits include increased vacation and sick days, paid parental leave and more. It will impact both full-time and part-time employees across all 270 Apple Stores nationwide.

The tech giant's offer of more generous benefits didn't come out of the blue. Apple, like many corporations, is having a tough time recruiting and retaining hourly workers in a tight labor market. A number of media outlets, including The Verge, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac and others have reported on the grim realities of Apple's retail operations, which include low pay, stressful workloads and low employee morale. Staffing shortages due to Covid-19 led to many stores operating on reduced hours or closing altogether. Dozens of Apple employees staged a Christmas Eve walkout in order to protest their working conditions. The testimony of these workers presents a stark contrast to Apple's financial standing during the pandemic, which has produced several consecutive record-breaking quarters.

Apple will double the number of paid sick days for both full-time and part-time employees. Full-time retail employees will receive 12 sick days instead of six. The company will also be more lenient in granting sick leave, allowing workers to use sick leave for mental health days or in order to take family members to the doctor. Part-time workers will also receive paid vacation days and paid parental leave for up to six weeks.

The company's benefits expansion follows similar moves by Amazon, Walmart and Fedex to retain hourly and front-line employees. Thousands of frontline workers have since quit or retired due to stressful and dangerous working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic. But labor rights advocates point out that many of these improvements, such as bonuses or hazard pay, are either temporary or have since been rolled back.

Sony's next PS5 system update will add voice commands

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 02:30 PM PST

The next PlayStation 4 and PS5 system update will add a handful of new accessibility and quality of life features to Sony's consoles. Among the additions is support for voice commands on PlayStation 5. Sony's previous-generation console has had that feature since launching in 2013, but it's now making its way to the company's latest console too.

Starting with a beta Sony will make available to English-speaking users in the US and UK first, the company is adding a system option that will make the console respond to "Hey PlayStation." It's a feature you can turn off, but leaving it on will allow you to use your voice to launch games and other apps, as well as open the system menu and control media playback. The update will bring other new accessibility features, including one that makes headphones output mono sound. Sony notes that's something that should be particularly helpful to players with unilateral hearing loss.

As part of the same update, Sony is also tweaking how group chats work. Moving forward, they'll be known as parties, and you'll have the option to decide whether they're private or open to the public. Should you leave your party open, not only can your friends join without an invite, but so can their friends as well.

Another new PS5 feature will allow you to filter your games by genre, as well as keep up to five of them to your console's home screen for quick access. Sony has also updated the design of trophy cards and added support for more screen reader languages, among other changes.

You can help Sony beta test the update by signing up to do so on the company's website. Look for an email in your inbox on Wednesday to find out if you've been selected to take part. Sony will release both PlayStation 4 and PS5 system updates later this year.

Coco's restaurant delivery bots are headed to more warm-weather cities

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 02:00 PM PST

Coco, a company that offers food deliveries by remote-controlled robot, has expanded beyond its home base of Los Angeles for the first time. The service is now available in Austin as it commences a nationwide rollout. Coco plans to bring its robots to Dallas, Houston and Miami in the next few months.

The company says its service, which debuted in 2020, now has hundreds of delivery robots on the streets of LA, covering all of the city's major neighborhoods. Coco claims to reduce costs and deliver food to customers 30 percent faster than traditional methods with an on-time delivery rate of 97 percent. It partnered with 10 Austin restaurants and chains at the outset, and will offer deliveries in the South Lamar, South Congress, South Austin, Downtown, Northside, North Loop and Domain neighborhoods from the jump.

Other robot delivery services — such as Yandex, Serve Robotics (a former division of Postmates) and Nuro — have adopted the self-driving approach. Coco's robots, on the other hand, are controlled by employees who work from home.

Adobe Premier Pro now uses AI to fit music to your videos

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 01:30 PM PST

It can be a pain to time music with a video you're editing — you may spend ages trimming and slicing tracks to create an arrangement that matches your footage. Adobe thinks your computer can do the heavy lifting, though. It just updated Premiere Pro with a Remix feature that uses AI to re-time music to fit your video's duration. This probably won't be completely satisfying if you're exacting about your soundtracks, but it could save valuable hours if you were just looking for well-timed background audio.

The Premiere Pro update is also far more useful for transcriptions. Speech-to-text conversion is now available offline through downloadable language packs, leading to transcriptions up to three times faster on M1- and Core i9-based systems. English is included by default.

Adobe is providing some of its customary hardware optimizations. Windows users can now export 10-bit HDR videos up to 10 times faster with Intel- or NVIDIA-based graphics. Block Dissolve and Linear Wipe effects now use GPU acceleration, too. And if you own one of the latest 14- or 16-inch MacBook Pros, Premiere Pro now properly adapts to the display notch. These won't necessarily affect your workflows in the way Remix might, but they'll be appreciated if they help you finish projects that much sooner.

Gumroad faces backlash over alleged NFT ambitions

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 01:00 PM PST

Just as many of the ugliest online fights begin these days, Brian "Box" Brown, an Eisner-winning illustrator and comic artist, sent a seemingly innocuous tweet. It read, in part, "my former regular freelance employer has let me know they'll be...Embracing NFTs 🙃 so...we had to part ways." The then unnamed business, Gumroad, shot back the next day with a now-pinned response denying it had plans to enter the controversial crypto-collecting space, and has since attacked detractors from its corporate account, provided conflicting information and alienated a growing portion of the artist community it serves. How did it get so bad?

Gumroad, for the unfamiliar, is a digital goods sales platform, which hosts anything from art to ebooks to self-help courses. It was built in 2011 by then-19-year-old CEO Sahil Lavinglia, who is perhaps the only consistent figure within the company. Following a period of growth Lavinglia had to lay off staff in 2016 after failing to raise more money. The company survived, but as it is presently structured, Gumroad is something of an anomaly. The number of full-time employees, according to one the CEO's blog posts is "none. Not even me," preferring to maintain a contractor workforce. It also espouses a version of radical transparency, choosing to make its product roadmap and board meetings public. 

The image of an all-remote workplace free from deadlines or meetings belies a somewhat haphazard business. Some former workers seemingly signed no contracts beyond basic tax forms. Some contract work was compensated through Venmo. At least one of the contracts signed by Brown related to royalties and IP rights for book illustrations listed one Kun Wu Yu as the primary party, and the address as what appears to be a cancer research center in Taiwan. (When asked about this he first glibly replied that "cancer research is an important cause" and later stated he didn't recall the contract.) To say Lavinglia is not an especially careful founder might be an understatement. According to a former contractor, who we granted anonymity for fear of retaliation, "it's not the ideal work culture it appears to be."

Brown by all indications was among the permalancers filling out the ranks of Gumroad, and a busy one at that. "There was never a time in the last two years where it even slowed down" he told Engadget from the "20 plus hours per week" he billed, which he estimates became a "large portion of my daily work" and contributed around $2000 to his monthly income. Then in January, he alleges, Lavingia ceased communication. In 15 years of freelancing, he said "I never experienced a situation where a regular gig for that long suddenly just disappeared without even an email being like, 'we're gonna let you go,' you know what I mean?" He believes he was no longer assigned work because of his refusal to get involved with the company's seeming NFT ambitions. 

Once the differences in opinion between Lavinglia and Brown became open hostilities, that penchant for transparency turned into a cudgel. Both parties began posting screenshots from the company Slack (something which Brown claims to have since been removed from) which reflect uncharitably — though Gumroad has since deleted many of these tweets. 

In one, after Gumroad had ghosted him, Brown asks if there's any available illustration work, to which Lavinglia states "the one idea I have is an NFT project, unfortunately 😔" — a possible commission to help make 7,777 generative art characters. "It sounds like you need someone who is into [NFTs] from here on out," Brown says. "Yep, probably," Lavinglia responds. 

Lacking here is the context that the subject of NFTs had, according to Brown, come up repeatedly for the past six months. Each time Brown refused, though some more tactfully than others. (In another tweeted screenshot dating to September, Lavinglia pitches NFTs as an options, and Brown demurs by claimed involvement in such a scheme would cause his readership to "cancel" him.) 

The aforementioned anonymous former contractor told Engadget that "my understanding is that Gumroad was going to get into NFTs at some point in 2022/2023." Gumroad has been in the midst of a site redesign, for which it appears to have retained the services of high-powered brand manager and former Google design director Karin Soukup; in an email introducing Soukup to Brown, Lavinglia sent an email last October with the subject "Illustrations for Gumroad rebrand (+ NFTs...?)." (When asked via Twitter DM, Lavinglia wrote "Yeah, don't recall. But the parens and ? seem pretty clear 😂." 

In his personal capacity, Lavinglia has been a minor booster for NFTs and crypto generally. He minted an NFT of his Twitter avatar and sold it on OpenSea, seemingly to Unacademy founder Guarav Munjal for the equivalent of around $3,000 USD — and pledging to split the proceeds 50/50 between himself and the artist (his own wife.) "NFT ownership is much more accessible than equity ownership," he tweeted last September, a statement only made stranger by the knowledge that Gumroad is itself financed in part by equity crowdfunding.  

It's unclear how any of these screenshots lend credence to Lavinglia's position that the company is not pursuing NFTs; conversely it seems evident that had Brown agreed to the project Gumroad most likely would be entering the crypto space. On his personal account he attempted to make a distinction between "doing an NFT collection" and "pivoting to NFTs" — later stating "we may do an NFT collection in the future, but no plans."

While an abundance of evidence suggests Gumroad is not being entirely transparent about the degree to which it's investing in some sort of NFT play, it's also not entirely clear digital tulip mania is to blame for Brown's loss of a steady gig. According to the same anonymous former contractor, there have been several similar cases in recent months. "Most of the marketing team got let go recently and it came as a surprise to all of us," they wrote. Others confirmed they were no longer working for Gumroad but declined to go into detail as to the nature of their departures. It's unclear why the company many be thinning its ranks yet again, and Lavinglia declined to comment on the matter. Gumroad's jobs page states that the company is in a hiring freeze until April. 

Employees aren't the only ones leaving Gumroad — or at least trying to. Some of those who abhor NFTs, as well as bystanders who felt the company's public spat with Brown was inappropriate, have pledged to leave the platform. However, a number of them — including Brown — found themselves unable to delete their accounts. "We found the bug around deletion, and are working to fix it now. The issue is that these users all have made money with Gumroad but haven't been paid out yet (due to not connecting a bank account for example)," Lavinglia told Engadget, "working to allow them to delete if they wish to anyway." The bug seems to be impacting at least one creator with no outstanding monetary balance on the platform. 

Lavinglia has been about as tactful with irate users of his site as he has with his former illustrator — at one point, and in apparent contravention of California privacy laws, he cross-referenced an account's email address against the site's user information. "Never used Gumroad, never going to," Jacob van Loon tweeted. Gumroad replied "According to your bio's email address, you already have." The response was hastily deleted. Van Loon maintains that no such account was ever created.

Backlash against crypto has been a recent source of strife for a number of companies. Creators of various stripes were incensed to learn Kickstarter was a drifting into blockchain technologies; comic artist Spike Trotman to recently launched her own crowdfunding initiative in order to avoid involvement in the crypto space. Chat app Discord walked back plans to NFT and crypto integration plans last November following user backlash while Electronic Arts softened its own bullish outlook on the technology for similar reasons. A growing number of artists have voiced concerns about NFTs, in general, as a vector for theft, while the entire market for these digital goods seems, at best, wildly inflated and riddled with bad actors. These incidents have also been an opportunity for some firms to win over to skeptical creators, such as unabashed indie game marketplace Itch.io: 

But it's not just customers who companies stand to lose by stepping into this space. While Brown maintains that working for Gumroad, until recently, was an excellent gig that paid well and afforded him plenty of freedom, when asked if he'd consider working for the company again in a non-NFT context he responded with an emphatic "hell no." He considers the whole affair a breach of trust. "I'm married, I have two children, I have a mortgage, I have all kinds of bills [...] and so I need to plan for that. I can't just suddenly lose my regular gig and they don't tell me. They lost all my trust there," he said "And then when they lied online from their account on Twitter, you know, I would never work for them again, at this point. I just have no trust at all, with them. It's irrelevant whether they actually make NFTs or not, because they already made an action on NFTs by making me leave the company because I didn't want to work on that." 

Have you worked in some capacity for Gumroad? I'd like to hear from you. Download Signal messenger for iOS or Android and text me confidentially at 646 983 9846.

Meta denies it threatened to leave Europe

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 12:44 PM PST

Meta has "absolutely no desire to withdraw from Europe." The company issued the statement in a blog post it published on Tuesday after some media outlets published reports claiming it had "threatened" to pull Facebook and Instagram from the continent amid uncertainty over whether the US and European Union would agree to replace a scrapped transatlantic privacy agreement.

The "threat" Meta made came in the form of a disclosure the company made in its latest earnings report. Published last week, the document said the company would "likely be unable to offer a number of our most significant products and services, including Facebook and Instagram, in Europe" if the US and European Union failed to ratify a new data transfer agreement and the company couldn't depend on other existing mechanisms. Meta has issued similar warnings in the past, but it did so without naming Facebook and Instagram specifically.

At the center of Meta's fears over its future on the European continent are the Safe Harbour Agreement and Privacy Shield, both of which were struck down by the European Court of Justice in recent years over fears of what happens to the data of EU citizens once it's on servers in the US. As the company points out, it's not the only business facing uncertainty over whether officials can agree to a substitute. It notes at least 70 other companies have voiced similar concerns.

"We want to see the fundamental rights of EU users protected, and we want the internet to continue to operate as it was intended: without friction, in compliance with applicable laws — but not confined by national borders," the company said.

For the most part, European lawmakers seemed to welcome the prospect of Meta leaving the EU market. "I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without Facebook," said French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire when asked to comment on the possibility of Meta pulling Facebook and Instagram. "Digital giants must understand that the European continent will resist and affirm its sovereignty."

Douglas Trumbull, VFX whiz for ‘Blade Runner’, ‘2001’ and others, dies at 79

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 12:09 PM PST

Douglas Trumbull, the visual effects mastermind behind Blade Runner, Close Encounter of the Third Kind, 2001: A Space Odyssey and numerous others, died on Monday at age 79. His daughter Amy Trumbull announced the news on Facebook, writing that her father's death followed a "two-year battle" with cancer, a brain tumor and stroke.

Trumbull was born on April 8, 1942 in Los Angeles, the son of a mechanical engineer and artist. His father worked on the special effects for films including The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars: A New Hope. The younger Trumbull worked as an illustrator and airbrush artist in Hollywood for many years. His career really took off after he cold-called Stanley Kubrick, a conversation which led to a job working on 2001: A Space Odyssey.

One of his most significant contributions to 2001 was creating the film's Star Gate, a ground-breaking scene where astronaut Dave Bowman hurtles through an illuminated tunnel transcending space and time. In order to meet Kubrick's high aesthetic standards for the shot, Trumbull essentially designed a way to turn the film camera inside-out. Trumbull's ad hoc technique "was completely breaking the concept of what a camera is supposed to do," he said during a lecture at TIFF.

Trumbull earned visual effects Oscar nominations for his work on Close Encounters, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner. He also received the President's Award from the American Society of Cinematographers in 1996.

Later in his career, Trumbull voiced distaste over the impact of computers on visual effects, decrying the cheapening and flattening impact of the new era of CGI. "Today, the motion picture visual effects industry has almost entirely given way to computer graphics. We're able to do things that were absolutely inconceivable in the old days like water effects, fire, explosions, smoke. But, almost everything in the visual effects industry today is created on computers. There's a certain commoditization that has resulted that I'm not comfortable with myself. I like miniatures and physical effects and what I call organic effects," said Trumbull in a 2018 interview for The Hollywood Reporter.

He spent the last years of his life working on a new super-immersive film format he dubbed MAGI, which he believed would improve the experience of watching a film in theaters. But Trumbull struggled to draw the interest of today's film industry. "What interests me is being able to create profound personal experiences for audiences," Trumbull toldMIT Technology Review in 2016. "Whatever it is, I want you to feel like what's happening on the screen is actually happening in real-time, to you, in this theater."

Instagram rolls out bulk delete features and new account controls

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 11:41 AM PST

Instagram is making it a whole lot easier to remove posts, comments and other activity from the platform. The photo sharing app is rolling out new account controls that allow users to bulk delete comments and posts, and review past interactions and search activity.

The features will be available in a new section of users' profiles called "your activity." The goal, according to Instagram, is to make it easier to revisit and delete past interactions. While it was technically possible to delete past likes, comments and posts from Instagram in the past, the only way to do so without deleting your account altogether was to manually wade through your past posts one by one.

Now, the "your activity" section will offer shortcuts to view past timeline and Story posts, as well as likes and comments on other users' feeds. There are also shortcuts to review time spent in the app, search history, link clicks and account-level activity like username changes.

Instagram first previewed the changes in December, noting at the time that it could be "particularly important for teens to more fully understand what information they've shared on Instagram." The app has come under renewed pressure to create more safety features for younger people in recent months, and making it easier to remove past activity could be seen as one way to "depressurize" the app.

Google says default 2FA cut account breaches in half

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 11:37 AM PST

Google's decision to enable two-factor authentication by default appears to have borne fruit. The search firm has revealed that account breaches dropped by 50 percent among those users where 2FA (two-step verification in Google-speak) was auto-enabled. The plunge was proof the extra factor is "effective" in safeguarding your data, Google said, although it didn't disclose the exact number of compromised accounts.

The company didn't say how rapidly it expected 2FA to spread, but promised to continue the rollout through 2022. More than 150 million people have been auto-enrolled so far, including more than 2 million YouTube creators.

The company also promised more security upgrades to help mark Safer Internet Day. As of March, Google will let you opt-in to an account-level safe browsing option that keeps you from visiting known harmful sites. Google is also expanding Assistant's privacy-minded Guest Mode to nine new languages in the months ahead, and has promised to ramp up safeguards for politicians ahead of the US midterm elections.

The reduced volume of account breaches isn't a shock — requiring more effort to crack an account is bound to deter some would-be intruders. It hasn't always been easy to show the tangible impact of 2FA on security, though, and the sheer scale of Google's user base gives it a representative sample others can't easily match.

NASA picks Lockheed Martin to build a rocket that will return from Mars

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 11:19 AM PST

The Perseverance rover is a capable machine, but one thing it can't do is send rock, sediment and atmospheric samples from Mars back to Earth by itself. NASA hopes to retrieve some of those through its Mars Sample Return Program, and it's taken another step forward in the project. The agency has chosen Lockheed Martin to build the first rocket to be fired off another planet.

The Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will be a small, lightweight rocket and is a crucial component of NASA's ambitious plan. "This groundbreaking endeavor is destined to inspire the world when the first robotic round-trip mission retrieves a sample from another planet — a significant step that will ultimately help send the first astronauts to Mars," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

A Sample Retrieval Lander will take the MAV to the surface of Mars. It will land in or close to Jezero Crater, where Perseverance landed last February.

The lander will act as the launch platform for the MAV. Once the MAV is in orbit, the plan is for a European Space Agency Earth Return Orbiter equipped with NASA's Capture, Containment and Return System payload to capture the rocket. The aim is to bring the samples back to Earth by the mid-2030s.

"We are nearing the end of the conceptual phase for this Mars Sample Return mission, and the pieces are coming together to bring home the first samples from another planet," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters, said. "Once on Earth, they can be studied by state-of-the-art tools too complex to transport into space."

Lockheed Martin will deliver multiple MAV test units and a flight unit to NASA. The contract, which is worth up to $194 million, calls for the company to design, develop, test and evaluate the integrated MAV system, and to design and develop the ground support equipment.

Not only does the MAV need to be able to tolerate the Martian environment and be compatible with several types of spacecraft, it needs to be small enough to squeeze inside the Sample Retrieval Lander. It's a tough challenge, but Lockheed Martin has several years to figure things out. The lander won't launch before 2026.

Justice Department recovers $3.6 billion in Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex hack

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 10:45 AM PST

The Department of Justice has seized approximately $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 hack of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. At the time, the incident was the second-largest heist of its kind, with a hacker stealing 119,756 units of Bitcoin, then valued at approximately $63.7 million. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced the seizure of more than 94,000 Bitcoins and the arrest of the duo who allegedly tried to launder the fortune.

According to the agency, husband and wife Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan obtained the cryptocurrency after a hacker breached Bitfinex's systems and initiated more than 2,000 illegal transactions. The cryptocurrency was deposited in a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein. The two then allegedly spent the next five years moving more than 25,000 Bitcoins using a "complicated" laundering process that eventually saw some of the money end up in their financial accounts. Following a court order, federal agents obtained online files from Lichtenstein that included the private keys to the digital wallet that held the stolen cryptocurrency.

"Cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. "Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter the form it takes."

The case marks the largest financial seizure in the Justice Department's 151-year history. Before today, its largest cryptocurrency seizure involved the Silk Road dark web marketplace. In 2020, the agency recovered 69,000 Bitcoins, worth about $1 billion at the time. Lichtenstein and Morgan face up to 25 years in prison if convicted on the money laundering and conspiracy charges brought forward by the Justice Department.

Disney+ streamed the Oscar nominations to test live events

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 10:08 AM PST

Disney+ dipped its toes into the world of livestreaming for the first time in the US with a broadcast of this year's Oscar nominations, offering a glimpse of a possible direction for the platform. "We performed a test for livestreaming capabilities on Disney+ in the US with this morning's Academy Award nominations," a Disney+ spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. "We are pleased with the results and will continue to test as part of our ongoing and iterative approach to deliver the best user experiences to consumers."

The nominations were broadcast on multiple platforms, including Hulu, Good Morning America, ABC News Live and the Oscars website. Given Disney+ was not the only option for awards aficionados to watch the nominations, it was a smart way for Disney to test the platform's livestreaming capacity without placing too much strain on the infrastructure. Notably, Disney owns ABC, the network that broadcasts the Academy Awards ceremony each year.

Disney+ does offer some livestreaming options in other countries, including sports in India and WWE events in Indonesia. Of course, Disney has other platforms with livestreaming options in the US, including Hulu + Live TV and ESPN+. So, it's not impossible to imagine Disney+ streaming live sports, the Oscars ceremony or other events in the future — something that could help it stand out from rivals like Netflix, which has largely steered clear of livestreaming.

Kia's PHEV Sportage SUV is coming to America

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 09:51 AM PST

Just a few short months after debuting it for the European market, Kia has announced on Tuesday that the 2023 PHEV (plug-in hybrid) variant of its venerated Sportage line of SUVs will be made available for sale in America as well. When the Sportage PHEV arrives in Q3 of this year, it will offer a 66.9 kW electric motor backed by a 13.8 kWh battery in addition to its 1.6-liter, 177-hp turbocharged four-cylinder engine.

Unlike the EV6 or IONIQ5, the new Sportage PHEV is not built upon Hyundai's E-GMPT platform. Rather, it rides atop the N3 chassis like the Sorento and Optima. All-wheel drive will come standard.

"The first Sportage PHEV to be introduced in the U.S. demonstrates that Kia is listening to our consumers who are asking for electrified solutions and super-efficient powertrains, and Sportage delivers on that promise in a sophisticated, refined package," Sean Yoon, president and CEO, Kia America, said in a statement Tuesday. "As Kia continues to implement our Plan S strategy and push toward carbon neutrality, models like Sportage PHEV are paving the way."   

Kia Sportage PHEV
Hyundai Motor Group

The small stature of the Sportage's battery means that though it can only provide enough juice to propel the vehicle around 32 miles on electricity alone, it can be recharged far more quickly than a full EV. Kia estimates that the 13.8 kWh battery will require only around two hours to fully fill using a Level 2 charger. The vehicle's regenerative braking system should help keep its cells topped off, though the company has not yet released EPA mileage or range estimates yet (but expect them to drop as we get closer to the Sportage's actual on-sale date).

Kia Sportage PHEV
Hyundai Motor Group

The exterior of the PHEV version will look very much like its HEV and ICE counterparts, and its interior will feature all the same bells and whistles that consumers have come to expect from modern hybrid vehicles. The Sportage will offer a slew of driver assist systems, like what we saw recently in the EV6, 12.3-inch a instrument cluster — and equally-sized central infotainment system — as well as 4G Wi-Fi for up to 5 devices, stolen vehicle tracking, OTA map updates and access to the Kia Connect mobile app.

 

EU unveils a $49 billion plan to address chip shortages

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 09:15 AM PST

Some jurisdictions are looking into ways of boosting semiconductor production amid the global chip shortage that's impacting all kinds of sectors. The European Union, for one, wants to become a bigger player in the field and it announced a $49 billion plan to help it get there. The EU's executive branch has revealed the European Chips Act, which, in part, aims to reduce the bloc's reliance on components from Asia.

The EU believes the plan will allow Europe to harness its strengths in areas like research and manufacturing, while addressing what it says are some of the region's weaknesses. The legislation aims to bolster research and development, boost production and monitor the supply of semiconductors.

The plan, which requires approval from member states and the European Parliament, involves public and private investments and looks to mitigate any future disruption to chip supply chains. The bloc also wants to double its share of the global semiconductor market to 20 percent by 2030.

"The European Chips Act will be a game changer for the global competitiveness of Europe's single market," European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. "In the short term, it will increase our resilience to future crises, by enabling us to anticipate and avoid supply chain disruptions. And in the mid-term, it will help make Europe an industrial leader in this strategic branch."

The introduction of the Chips Act follows an effort to bolster chip production in the US. This month, the House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act, which earmarks $52 billion in subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing as well as almost $300 billion for research and development. President Joe Biden plans to sign the bill into law should it pass through the Senate.

Legislation on both sides of the Atlantic could lead to a battle between Europe, the US and Asia to attract chip manufacturers. If legislators approve them, the plans should ultimately boost global semiconductor production, which will benefit manufacturing process for things like medical equipment, electric vehicles and game consoles.

Google 'Journeys' help you resume previous searches in Chrome

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 09:05 AM PST

Ever found yourself immersed in a web search, only to lose track after an interruption? Google thinks it can help. It's introducing a previously teased Journeys feature (shown above) in the latest release of Chrome for desktop that lets you resume searches based on topics. Type a related word or visit the Chrome History Journeys page and you'll see the option to resume your research, complete with associated links and search terms. Return to a vacation search, for instance, and you might see the tourism websites you didn't visit the first time around.

Journeys are rolling out now to all Chrome desktop browsers. They're initially limited to surfers using English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portugese, Spanish and Turkish.

Other updates are useful even if you've cleared out your search backlog. Chrome Actions should be more useful — you can perform additional browser tasks just by typing them in the address bar, such as "manage settings" and "view your Chrome history." Android users, meanwhile, will see a significantly expanded repertoire of home screen widgets (below) that help you start text, voice and Lens searches. You can even launch Incognito tabs or the offline Dino game. While Android is already well-equipped for search widgets, this should still prove helpful if you routinely use Chrome's special features.

Google Chrome widgets in Android (widescreen)
Google

Apple's 'Tap to Pay' lets iPhones accept contactless payments

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 08:35 AM PST

The rumors of direct iPhone contactless payments were true. Apple has revealed Tap to Pay on iPhone, an upcoming feature that will let businesses accept payments just by bumping handsets (and the Apple Watch). Stores won't need dongles, terminals or other hardware to take your money.

The technology requires an iPhone XS or later and unsurprisingly supports Apple Pay, but it will also work with other digital wallets, third-party payment platforms and contact-free credit and debit cards. Stripe is already planning to offer Tap to Pay on iPhone to business customers, including Shopify's Point of Sale app, in the spring. Other platforms and apps are coming later in 2022, Apple said, with a future iOS beta giving developers their first chance to implement Tap to Pay.

The tech will initially be available in the US, but it will work with common payment cards from American Express, Discover, Mastercard and Visa. American Apple Stores will support Tap to Pay on iPhone later in the year.

Apple is promising the same levels of privacy and security you normally get with its tap-to-pay functionality, including encrypted transactions. The company doesn't know who's making a purchase or what you're buying.

This isn't a surprising move. Apple bought Mobeewave in 2020 with a not-so-subtle hint it would use the Canadian startup to turn iPhones into payment terminals. This also furthers Apple's ever-growing payments strategy which also includes Apple Pay, Apple Pay Cash and Apple Card. It's also a potential blow against Android — in theory, shops that embrace an iPhone-based payment system will be slightly less convenient for Android-toting customers.

It's safe to presume this will pose trouble for companies that have thrived on phone-based payment hardware, like Block's Square brand. While these firms frequently rely more on their services for income than devices, they may have to support Apple's new feature in their apps to remain competitive.

Spotify’s problems are bigger than Joe Rogan

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 08:00 AM PST

From musicians pulling their music to a high-profile podcaster pausing their exclusive show, Spotify is under attack from all sides. Furore over Joe Rogan's podcast and Spotify's subsequent misinformation policies and actions has come both internally and externally. Much of the backlash is warranted as Spotify hasn't been up front about the content of Rogan's podcast, or misinformation in general. And the lack of transparency is why the company's current issues are much bigger than one massively popular creator.

By now, you've likely heard something about the Joe Rogan saga. The popular podcast host has been controversial for years, but criticism ramped up after a December 31 episode featuring physician and biochemist Dr. Robert Malone. While speaking to Rogan, Dr. Malone made a number of unfounded claims about COVID-19 vaccines, including that "mass formation psychosis" led many in the US to take the jab. After the episode was posted, hundreds of doctors, nurses, scientists and educators sent a letter to Spotify urging it to create a clear misinformation policy and take "responsibility to mitigate the spread" of such content.

When the group posted the letter online, Engadget reached out to Spotify to ask if the company already had a misinformation policy, how it takes action against misinformation and if it was considering any action against the Malone episode of JRE. The company didn't respond. Two weeks later, CEO Daniel Ek penned a statement on the matter and posted the company's "platform rules" on a Sunday afternoon. It's unclear if Ek was already planning to publish the platform-wide policy or if it was in response to a report two days earlier of internal explanations to employees as to why certain episodes of Rogan's podcast hadn't been removed.

During the company's Q4 2021 earnings call last week, Ek took responsibility for not publishing the content policy sooner. "We should've done it earlier and that's on me," he admitted. To employees during a company meeting the same day, the CEO explained that Spotify is not a publisher, so it doesn't have creative control over Rogan's show in advance. He said that since JRE is licensed content, it doesn't have oversight like it does for podcasts from The Ringer or Gimlet – production companies Spotify owns. "We don't approve his guests in advance, and just like any other creator, we get his content when he publishes, and then we review it, and if it violates our policies, we take the appropriate enforcement actions," Ek said.

LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 20, 2021 - The engineer room rests next to the main studio in,
A control room at Spotify's "Pod City." 
Genaro Molina via Getty Images

Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote this weekend that Spotify's "failure to take any meaningful responsibility, other than adding a few disclaimers, is all too reminiscent of the way Facebook, for years, has dodged accountability for spreading so many harmful lies." And part of shirking responsibility comes in the form of Spotify's argument of a platform versus a publisher.

Spotify is a publisher, no matter what it says to the contrary. Paying a reported $100 million to lock down JRE as an exclusive brings more responsibility for its content than a show from "any other creator." Ek argued during that same speech to employees that "exclusivity does not equal endorsement" and that the solution is to secure "an even broader set of exclusives that represent even more voices." These two statements point to Spotify trying to build a foundation when the house is nearly finished.

A treasure trove of exclusives has helped make Spotify the number one podcast app in the US, according to Ek. Over the last few years, the company has purchased podcast production studios like Gimlet, Parcast and The Ringer, making shows exclusive to its service along the way. It has amassed a wealth of talent, including the most popular podcast globally on Spotify in Joe Rogan's show. Sure sounds like the behavior of a publisher.

One of Spotify's most important podcast acquisitions was Anchor, an all-in-one production suite that made creating and publishing shows a breeze. The company has since leveraged its powerful ad setup for shows on the service and Anchor has regularly introduced new features to make recording even easier. It's literally a place where anyone can publish a podcast and it has helped Spotify add over a million shows to its library. In late 2020, Spotify said Anchor accounted for 70 percent of its podcasts, around 1.3 million at the time.

Spotify The Ringer
Billy Steele/Engadget

However, Anchor's own platform policy hasn't been updated since July 2021. There's no mention of COVID-19 misinformation, except for one item that bans any content that "conflicts with the Terms, as determined by Spotify, collectively ('Objectionable Content')." Right now, that would include Spotify's recently published policy. However, until recently, those guidelines weren't public, and Anchor wasn't clearly displaying Spotify's policy. Now it's doing so via a clickable pop-up when you upload a show.

"Spotify's Platform Rules apply to all content on Spotify, including Anchor," a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget. "We began highlighting our Platform Rules in our creator and publisher tools on February 2nd to raise awareness around what's acceptable and help creators understand their accountability for the content they post on our platform."

The lack of transparent guidelines is Spotify's biggest problem. The issue goes beyond Joe Rogan and covers the entire platform. When asked for comment about removing Neil Young's music from the service (at his request), the company said it had "detailed content policies in place and we've removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic." Those policies were not made public until four days later. What's more, when Engadget asked for information about the "over 20,000" podcasts that had been pulled, Spotify didn't respond.

Right now, we only know about a fewspecific instances of content actions. So what happens when a creator who's not being paid a vault of money espouses similar opinions to the ones Joe Rogan or his guests share on JRE? You know, the ones the company has already said "didn't meet the threshold for removal." On last week's earnings call, Ek was adamant that Spotify doesn't "change our policies based on one creator nor do we change it based on any media cycle, or calls from anyone else." However, a Media Matters analysis of Rogan's show going back to July 2020 highlights numerous times the podcast host has run afoul of the "long-standing" rules on violence or hatred toward marginalized communities and COVID-19 misinformation.

Spotify is saying more about the situation to employees than it is to the public, and none of it is sensitive info or trade secrets. By addressing a major controversy in private, which is ultimately reported by the media, the company further erodes what trust it has left. The company hasn't publicly confirmed that it removed over 70 pre-Spotify-deal episodes of Joe Rogan's podcast for racist language, including use of the n-word, late last week at Rogan's request. But, again, Ek acknowledged the move to employees internally. Why not just let an unnamed spokesperson confirm the details when asked? Especially given Rogan himself addressed the content of those episodes in an apology video. The company also needs to open up about podcast removals and disclose what its review procedure is.

LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 20, 2021 - Studio 4 will be used for audio and video podcasts inside,
A studio inside Spotify's "Pod City"
Genaro Molina via Getty Images

Spotify created a content policy, so it's clearly considering how to police its platform. But what's in place now is only a partial solution in need of immediate expansion, explanation and revision before more damage is done. It's vague at a time where some specifics would go a long way. This is not about advocating for the company to "silence" Joe Rogan over his COVID views or anyone else who has been wrong on a podcast. It's clear the company isn't going to do so under the terms of its current deal with the host anyway. But a blanket warning label and mostly rationalizing its actions in private isn't enough.

Of course, Spotify isn't the first big tech company to hide behind the "platform" label, especially when it comes to taking responsibility for content. Facebook is perhaps the biggest example, as it has argued it's a technology platform rather than a publisher. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company does bear some responsibility for what's on the site but its actions have been tepid at best. Facebook has also argued that it's a publisher when taking such a stance is beneficial in court. Twitter has made the same case, most notably when questioned on how it enforced a "hacked materials" policy regarding a story about Hunter Biden's laptop. "Is Twitter a publisher? No, we are not. We distribute information," then-CEO Jack Dorsey told Congress. Section 230, the law that currently protects platforms from legal action for things users post, enables companies to make the argument. And that's a big reason why Congress is looking to reform it.

Ek wrote in his most recent message to staff that "canceling voices is a slippery slope," and that's true. The issue is the chief executive's mission to find "a balance," whether that's with a wider variety of viewpoints or by equally weighting "creator expression with user safety." Unless that balance comes with more transparency and oversight, more volume isn't going to solve anything. 

Apple scores its first Oscar nomination for Best Picture

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 07:37 AM PST

This year's Academy Awards nominations have been revealed, and Apple TV+ execs will surely be pleased. The service's films received six Oscar nods overall, up from two last year. Most significantly, Apple has broken through in the Best Picture category. CODA is the first Apple Original movie to receive a nomination for the top prize.

It's the first film with a principally deaf cast to be nominated for Best Picture. It's been 35 years since a deaf performer was nominated, and Troy Kotsur is now the first male actor to ever receive a nod, as he's up for Best Supporting Actor.

Writer and director Sian Heder is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay — CODA is a remake of a French film called La Famille Bélier. Apple paid a Sundance record of $25 million to acquire the rights to the film, which won the Grand Jury Prize for Drama and the Audience Award at last year's festival.

The other Apple movie that received nominations this year was Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth. It earned nods for Best Actor for Denzel Washington, Best Cinematography and Best Production Design.

Elsewhere, Netflix continued the run of awards success it has had over the last few years with a whopping 27 nominations across the board. Star-studded climate change satire Don't Look Up and Western The Power of the Dog are both nominated for Best Picture. The latter leads the pack overall with 12 nominations. Jane Campion, who received writing and directing nods, is the first woman to land two Best Director nominations. Other nominated Netflix films include The Lost Daughter, The Hand of God, Tick, Tick… Boom and the fantastic The Mitchells vs. The Machines.

Elsewhere, Dune has 10 nominations and Best Picture frontrunner Belfast received seven. Amazon's Being the Ricardos landed three acting nods, while No Time To Die, which marks Daniel Craig's final outing as James Bond, was nominated for Original Song, Sound and Visual Effects. Meanwhile, Japanese drama Drive My Car broke through in the Best Picture and directing races for four nominations in total.

The 94th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on March 27th.

Update 2/8 1:05PM ET: A previous version of this story indicated that Netflix earned 35 nominations this year instead of 27. 

Catch the first Nintendo Direct of 2022 tomorrow at 5PM ET

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 07:29 AM PST

Nintendo is ready to hold its first Direct livestream of 2022, and it promises to start the year in grand fashion. The company has revealed plans for a 40-minute Direct on February 9th at 5PM ET that will "mainly" focus on Switch games debuting in the first half of 2022.

The timing gives some idea of what to expect. There's a good chance you'll hear about Nintendo's own Kirby and the Forgotten Land (March 25th), and you might hear about soon-to-come third-party titles like Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (April 5th) or Life is Strange: Remastered Collection (spring).

With that in mind, there are more than a few wildcards this time around. Some of the biggest Switch games of the year only have a generic 2022 release window, including Splatoon 3, Bayonetta 3 and the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sequel. There's no guarantee you'll hear about any of these major releases during the Nintendo Direct, but we wouldn't be surprised if there are some earlier-than-expected launches or previously unannounced projects.

Amazon's smart thermostat is back on sale for $48

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 06:55 AM PST

Amazon's budget-friendly alternative to Google's Nest thermostats has returned to its all-time-low price for the first time since December. The company's smart thermostat, which it debuted last year, is 20 percent off and down to $48. As indicated by its low price tag, you won't get as many features with Amazon's gadget as you would with something like a Nest thermostat, but it's a good place to start if you're building up a smart home on a budget.

Buy smart thermostat at Amazon - $48

The smart thermostat is a sleek square with rounded corners and its minimalist design should help it fit nicely into any home. It's built with Honeywell Home Thermostat Technology and it's Energy Star-certified, so it could save you up to $50 per year on energy costs.

As with most Amazon devices, the smart thermostat works with Alexa — but it doesn't have a speaker or a microphone. You'll have to use an Alexa device like an Echo speaker or an Echo Show display to control it using voice commands. The Alexa mobile app is another option, and that's where you'll go to set schedules and change settings while you're out, too, so you come back to a home with the precise temperature you want.

That's all there is to Amazon's smart thermostat. Google's Nest Thermostat has advanced features like automatically turning the temperature down while you're away, but that device will set you back at least $130. Overall, Amazon's gadget is a good option for those that only want the basics and have tighter budgets. Just make sure to check out the device's compatibility information to ensure that it works with your system before you buy, and to know if you need an additional C-wire or power adapter kit to hook the thing up.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Meta's Oversight Board recommends stricter anti-doxxing policies

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 06:41 AM PST

Meta and its Oversight Board are frequently at odds, but this time they're working in concert. The Oversight Board has recommended Meta implement stricter anti-doxxing policies on Facebook and Instagram after the social media giant requested the Board's advice on sharing private addresses and images. Most notably, the Board asked Meta to remove an exception letting people share private residence info when it's considered "publicly available." That data usually requires effort to obtain from public records, according to the Board, but its tendency to spread rapidly on social networks significantly increases the potential for real-world harm.

The Board also called for more consistent use of exceptions for newsworthiness, a "quick and effective" means to request removal of private info and clearer explanations of when sharing partial info (such as a city or name) is enough to warrant removal. The overseer also wanted a special communications channel for doxxing victims, more opportunities to provide context for privacy violation reports and opportunities for offenders to delete residential info to have a post restored. Privacy violations should be considered "severe," the Board added.

Some of the recommendations were for looser policies. External photos of private residences should be allowed when the location is the focus of a news story, and people should be allowed to hold protests at publicly owned official residences (such as the homes of some national leaders). Meta should allow people to share their own residences, or for others to publish those locations with consent. At the same time, though, the Board wanted Meta to share privacy violation enforcement data, be more specific when notifying offenders and provide more detail on government-related requests.

Provided Meta accepts the choices, the moves could do more to discourage doxxing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram. In some cases, harassers share technically public (if realistically unknown) and partial info knowing it will be enough to do serious damage. While the recommendations might not prevent the most determined doxxers (those willing to risk their accounts) from sharing addresses, they should close loopholes that suggest Meta tolerates this behavior.

What we bought: An $18 lid that makes the Instant Pot actually good at slow cooking

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 06:30 AM PST

Every healthy relationship is built on compromise. Which is why there probably isn't room in my boyfriend's apartment for both my slow cooker and Instant Pot. Before we met, I had been living in my studio for almost eight years – plenty of time to accumulate all manner of cooking gadgets, tools and appliances. I purchased the slow cooker first, with a clear sense of what I wanted to make: soups, chili, maybe some bolognese. 

The Instant Pot, on the other hand, was an impulse buy. I didn't actually know what I would do with this multipurpose cooker, marketed as a "7-in-1" device. But seemingly everyone else was buying one. And it was on sale for Black Friday, as it always is. I paid $67.99 for the six-quart Duo 60 and, according to my Amazon order history, threw in a 9-inch springform pan and reversible cast iron grill/griddle pan. I somehow doubt those will make the journey over to my boyfriend's either.

So, of the Duo 60's seven functions (pressure cooking, slow cooking, rice, yogurt, steaming, sautéing and warming), slow cooking was clearly my comfort zone. The problem is, the Instant Pot is not very good at that, at least not out of the box. The same sealed lid that makes the IP so adept at pressure cooking rice, beans and meat is poorly suited to the task of slow cooking, which requires a meaningful amount of evaporation to be successful. While there's a steam tray latched to the back of the Instant Pot, a traditional slow cooker would have a glass lid with at least one hole for steam to escape. What's more, the sealed design rules out the possibility of inserting a probe thermometer, something all conventional slow cookers offer.

Instant Pot's first-party tempered glass lid, meant for slow cooking and sauteeing.

Read any number of articles or Reddit threads and you'll see two pieces of advice repeat themselves: adjust the amount of liquid, or increase the cooking time. My issue with that approach is that I'm not much of an improvisational cook to begin with, and I'd rather not learn after three-plus hours of cooking that my meal is a bust.

Eventually in my research I found this $18 tempered glass lid, made by Instant Pot itself. The company isn't so cheeky as to acknowledge the lid improves a flawed slow cooking experience, but needless to say, it does recommend the accessory for that purpose, not to mention sautéing, serving and keeping food warm. Though I purchased the Duo 60 in 2017, Instant Pot claims the six-quart lid should fit, well, any six-quart Instant Pot model. As a bonus, it's dishwasher safe, though I definitely hesitated after seeing at least two Amazon reviewers report their wash cycles ended in glass shards. (Mine survived just fine.)

My first test of the new setup was my favorite slow-cooker chili recipe. (As a tip, if you're new to slow cooking in the Instant Pot, treat the "Normal" setting as the equivalent of low, and "More" when the recipe calls for high. Like any slow cooker, the Instant Pot defaults to a warming mode after the cooking time is up.) After four hours of cooking on low, the chili tasted the way I remembered it: sweet, spicy and certainly not too soupy. And I was grateful to not have had to reduce the liquid by 15 to 20 percent, especially with so many different kinds of fluids required for this particular recipe. Another day, I cooked a vegetable-tortellini soup on high for five hours. (This recipe also gave me an excuse to try some sautéing too.)

Over the long hours each recipe was cooking, I noticed more and more condensation clinging to the underside of the lid. Though the Instant Pot itself got quite warm on low (and close to hot on high), the handle remained more tepid to the touch, which I was able to grab with bare hands without burning myself. As a tip, if you want to remove the lid without dripping all the condensation back into the dish, flip it toward you when removing it instead of lifting it straight up.

Another tip: the lid is also excellent for covering leftovers in the Instant Pot's inner pot. Just stick the covered stainless steel bowl in the fridge and worry about cleaning it another day. (Yes, my "tip" here is really just punting on doing the dishes.)

In the end, I'm still not sure what will become of my standalone slow cooker. Will I sell it on the cheap? Donate it? Gift it to my mom, who has never used a crock pot? TBD. But now that my Instant Pot is actually the multipurpose cooker I originally wanted, I suspect I won't be bringing that second appliance to the new apartment.

Jabra's hearing enhancement earbuds will be available this month for $799

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 06:00 AM PST

Jabra announced its Enhance Plus earbuds back in August, debuting a model that offers assistance to people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss. At the time, the company also announced that it would sell it directly to customers as a FDA-cleared self-fitting hearing aid. Later this month, Jabra will do just that. On February 25th, the company says you'll be able to purchase the Enhance Plus from select hearing care clinics for $799. 

The earbuds put "medical-grade hearing enhancement" inside a more approachable form factor that looks like a set of regular earbuds. Jabra says this device is also quite compact, 40 percent smaller than the company's Elite 7 Pro which are already very small. The Enhance Plus can be customized to fit the user's needs, including three speech filters and three listening modes. The earbuds not only help with in-person conversations but also offer the ability to take calls and listen to music — the core features of any set of earbuds. 

Four microphones work to reduce background clamor while improving the overall clarity of speech according to Jabra, so they're suitable for use in noisy settings. The company says you can expect up to 10 hours of battery life with an additional two full charges in the included case. The earbuds are also IP52 rated dust and water resistant and are equipped with on-board controls for basic functionality. 

Jabra says the Enhance Plus have FDA 510(k) clearance as a self-fitting hearing aid. This means that it will be available direct to consumers as an over-the-counter device inline with the agency's pending regulation that expands access to hearing assistance products by creating a new hearing aid category. Jabra isn't the only company with devices that fit the FDA designation for OTC products. Another example is Bose's SoundControl hearing aids, which have been available nationwide in the US for $850 since last summer. Those, however, look more like traditional hearing aids rather than earbuds. 

For now, state law may require a hearing test to make sure the Enhance Plus is right for you. If it is, the set will be available in grey and beige color options when it goes on sale later this month. 

Jeep and Razor made an off-road electric scooter

Posted: 08 Feb 2022 06:00 AM PST

There's still some room for over-the-top electric scooters, apparently. Jeep is partnering with Razor on the RX200, an adult e-scooter designed expressly for off-road use. It's not the fastest machine of its kind with a 12MPH top speed, but the combination of a wide design with 8-inch, air-filled pneumatic tires promises a comfortable and grippy ride on trails — at least, those trails that don't ban vehicles.

You won't venture too far beyond the beaten path with a 40-minute battery life. You might, however, appreciate the Jeep-like styling (shown below) if you want something more rugged-looking (or less flashy) than other e-scooters.

Razor x Jeep RX200 off-road electric scooter rear
Razor

The RX200 should be available now through Amazon and Razor's website. At $499, it's far more affordable than Jeep's $5,899 e-bike.
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