Twitter is going one step further in its efforts to help you track quoted retweets. The social media site has confirmed to The Verge that it’s testing an approach placing these counts directly on tweets, and has renamed them from Retweets with Comments to a far more digestible Quotes. If people are adding their own input to your posts instead of simply passing the message along, you’ll know it in short order.
The company didn’t say if or when it expected the feature to reach widespread adoption.
There’s no guarantee the two sides reach a deal, provided the report is accurate. However, it would make sense given the state of US shopping malls. Even before the pandemic, malls and their department stores were grappling with reduced traffic as customers increasingly shopped online. Some malls have replaced stores with call centers and other non-retail businesses just to stay afloat. COVID-19 further limited those options. It’s hard to rent space to offices that are working from home, and retail is frequently limited to curbside pickup or just a tiny amount of in-store shopping.
Amazon’s presence would likely make smaller mall store owners bristle, but they might not have much choice. The internet giant could provide a regular source of rent and keep malls alive. There would certainly be plenty of irony — the very force destroying malls might represent the best chance at keeping them intact.
It’s not certain exactly what prompted Toshiba’s decline, although there are a number of likely factors. Toshiba’s failed bet on HD DVD didn’t help — it produced media-centric laptops whose main feature became useless once Blu-ray and streaming took over. As The Registerobserved, rivals like Apple, Dell, and Lenovo also beat Toshiba at its own game with ultraportables like the MacBook Air and XPS series. Add a shrinking PC market and Toshiba was facing stiff competition in a market where there wasn’t much money for anyone but the very largest contenders.
Toshiba is still a major name in computing through categories like printing and storage, and it has fingers in categories like energy and retail. The Dynabook brand will live on, for that matter. Still, it’s a sad moment — whatever you thought of its products, Toshiba was a mainstay in the personal computing landscape.
The Echo Studio is relatively large and benefits the most if you use a high-resolution streaming service like Amazon Music HD, but it’s a bargain as far as premium smart speakers go. It produces a balanced, rich sound if you use the Stereo Spatial Enhancement feature. And like all Amazon speakers, the Alexa ecosystem is a distinct advantage. You can play services ranging from Spotify to Apple Music, use a wide variety of Alexa skills and control many (if not most) smart home devices.
The Echo Show 5 won’t compete with the Studio on audio quality, but it still sounds better than you might think for its size. Of course, its real strong suit is its display. We found it ideal as a bedside device that can serve as your clock, a daily news briefing device and a communicator thanks to the built-in camera. Don’t worry about potential camera hijacks, though — there’s a physical privacy shutter if you’re concerned. It’s already a solid value at its usual $90 price, and it’s almost a steal as a free bundle item.
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TikTok’s list of suitors is extending significantly beyond Microsoft. Wall Street Journalsources say Twitter has held “preliminary talks” about a possible union with TikTok’s US business. It’s still very early, and might not move forward, but Twitter reportedly believes it has an advantage over bidders like Microsoft due to its size. It thinks it wouldn’t face as much antitrust scrutiny if it clinched a deal, according to the tipsters.
Twitter’s size could also be a drawback, however. TikTok’s US business alone could be worth tens of billions of dollars, and that would be a serious obstacle when Twitter’s entire market capitalization is $29 billion. It would likely need to draw on help from investors and take on a large amount of debt. And while it has been relatively successful in recent years, it suffered a loss of more than $1.2 billion in its latest quarter. The company might not be in a position to buy a behemoth like TikTok.
Kicking your coffee habit probably isn’t enough to get you out of financial straits, prepaying your year’s worth of Hulu just might. The streaming service announced last week that it will begin allowing customers to purchase a 12 months of service for the price of 10, a whole $12 savings. You’ll still have to sit through ads though, as this deal doesn’t apply to the service’s upper-tier offerings.
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Audi’s first all-electric SUV, the E-Tron is receiving a price cut for the upcoming model year. Savvy buyers will get a nearly five-figure discount in 2021 when the vehicle’s price drops from $74,800 to $65,900. Though, if you’ve got the scratch to be seriously considering a luxury vehicle purchase in this economy, what’s an extra nine grand?
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You know your product is in trouble when you have to give it away for free.
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Disney on the other hand can apparently charge whatever the heck it wants (see: Mulan) and people will still scream, “shut up and take my money.”
A bank spokesperson said the company had since poured “significant” resources into bolstering its security and otherwise addressing orders from both the OCC and the Federal Reserve.
The payout isn’t small, but it might not make many victims happy. The breach exposed sensitive details like addresses, reported income and (in some cases) account numbers and credit scores. Capital One did provide free credit monitoring and identity theft protection after the incident, but the payout still amounts to about 75 cents per person affected in North America. Like the Equifax breach, the compensation may seem small compared to the security precautions and stress inflicted on affected people.
DARPA held the second trial in January this year and pitted participants’ greatly improved algorithms against AI adversaries developed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Both trials were hosted in person at the APL.
The third trial will be streamed from the APL, as well, with eight teams flying against the lab’s AI adversary algorithms on the first day and then against each other in a round robin tournament on the second. It’s the first time the participants are pitting their AIs against one another in public. On the last day, the top four AIs will compete in a single-elimination tournament for the championship title. The last team standing will then get the chance to fly against an Air Force fighter pilot controlling a virtual plane.
Col. Dan “Animal” Javorsek, program manager in DARPA’s Strategic Technology Office, said in a statement:
“Regardless of whether the human or machine wins the final dogfight, the AlphaDogfight Trials is all about increasing trust in AI. If the champion AI earns the respect of an F-16 pilot, we’ll have come one step closer to achieving effective human-machine teaming in air combat, which is the goal of the ACE program.”
Teams from Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Heron Systems, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI and SoarTech make up the eight participants for trial 3. Interested viewers will have to register beforehand to able to tune in: US citizens have until August 17th to sign up, while everyone else has until August 11th.
The renders themselves don’t appear to share anything new, although they’re a friendly reminder that offering an Android device with Google apps also means agreeing to the search giant’s policies, including the presence of a Google search bar on one of the default home screens.
The Duo might not be as expensive as you’d expect. While the two 5.6-inch AMOLED screens are clearly its highlights, the new Surface might include modest hardware like a 2019-era Snapdragon 855, 6GB of RAM and up to 256GB of storage. You’d also get just one 11-megapixel camera for video chats and selfies. As Microsoft has hinted for a while, the Duo could really be focused on the software — it would be more about multitasking for work than competing with the latest high-end phones.
Facebook just took down one of the larger targets in its crackdown on QAnon conspiracy theories. The social network told Reuters that it had removed Official Q/Qanon, a group with almost 200,000 members, after multiple posts reportedly violated policies against harassment, hate, and potentially harmful misinformation. The shutdown took effect August 4th, Facebook said, but wasn’t disclosed until August 6th (and publicized on the 7th).
The company added that it was keeping an eye on other QAnon groups on the site.
