Articles from The New York Times will no longer appear in the Apple News app. Today, the NYTannounced that it is ending its partnership with Apple News. The issue seems to be that while other services, like Google News, send readers to publishers’ websites, Apple News generally keeps readers in the app. Or, as NYT puts it, Apple’s approach does not align with The Times’ goal of building direct relationships with paying readers.
“Core to a healthy model between The Times and the platforms is a direct path for sending those readers back into our environments, where we control the presentation of our report, the relationships with our readers, and the nature of our business rules,” Meredith Kopit Levien, The Times’ chief operating officer, wrote in a memo to employees. “Our relationship with Apple News does not fit within these parameters.”
Earlier this month, several high-profile Reddit pages took a hiatus in protest of the company’s refusal to ban racist content. This seems to have finally caused Reddit to redefine its policies around hate speech and how it enforces them. Today, the company announced that it has banned about 2,000 subreddits, including one of the most prominent pro-Trump forums, r/the_donald. According to Reddit CEO, Steve Huffman, “The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average, antagonized us and other communities and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations.”
The r/the_donald subreddit is not connected to the Trump administration, though Donald Trump — whose account was suspended from Twitch today — did use it to participate in an Ask Me Anything event as a candidate in 2016. The forum became so popular that it spun off into its own website a few months ago.
As is the case in many other nations, TikTok is a huge deal in India. The short-form video app has more than 200 million users in the country, and parent company ByteDance had expected to cross the 300 million mark there by the end of this year.
All of the apps are still available on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play store, according to TechCrunch. It’s unclear at the moment how India actually plans to enforce the bans. The move will surely deepen tensions between the planet’s two most populated countries. Earlier this month, at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a border clash with Chinese troops.
“The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) has also received many representations from citizens regarding security of data and breach of privacy impacting upon public order issues,” the government said. “There has been a strong chorus in the public space to take strict action against apps that harm India’s sovereignty as well as the privacy of our citizens.”
There were problems, though. Chamberlain noted that the novelty of switching cars became a hassle for some customers as they were tired of constantly switching personal items between cars. The service could easily become too costly to run without frequent swaps. Companies may need to offer cars as short-term rentals and loaners for this to make sense.
This doesn’t mean the trial run was a waste. The company has a “mountain of data” that could help it tailor sales and services to a younger crowd, Chamberlain said. However, it does suggest that car subscriptions aren’t guaranteed to be hits. It may depend on having a brand where car swaps make more sense, like Porsche, or following a Volvo-style single vehicle approach.
Besides the bonus game, Sony is hosting a free online weekend starting on July 4th. If you don’t subscribe to PS Plus, you can play some of your multiplayer games online without a membership. The company is also giving away a PS Plus-inspired theme for a limited time.
Now that it’s 10-years-old, it’s hard to imagine what the modern gaming landscape would look like without the influence of PS Plus. When Sony started giving away monthly free games in 2012, Microsoft matched the service with Games with Gold in 2013. Players have since come to expect that they’ll get some free games for subscribing to a monthly gaming service, so much so that when it came time for Google to launch Stadia, even it made sure to include complimentary titles for subscribers.
The Velvet’s Dual Screen case has the same 360-degree hinge as V60 and G8X cases. The cover opens up smoothly (but thankfully not loosely), stops briefly at 180 degrees, then continues all the way to 360 degrees. When closed, the Velvet’s case has a 2.1-inch monochrome display on the cover to show the time, date and notifications. To pick up incoming calls, you just hit the dedicated Google Assistant Key instead of flipping the cover open.
One small annoyance here is you still need to use the bundled magnetic USB-C adapter to charge the encased phone (up to Quick Charge 4+), so make sure you don’t lose it. Luckily, you can also use wireless charging (up to 10W), with or without the case.
Richard Lai / Engadget
Since the G8X, LG has enhanced Dual Screen mode, using elements passed down from the $900 V60 to the $700 Velvet. My favorite is the Multi App Shortcuts, which let you launch two predefined apps on both screens, simultaneously. LG also included some pre-made shortcuts to help boost productivity and to inspire users: Gallery with Camera, Gallery with QMemo+ (LG’s note-taking app) and HD Audio Record with QMemo+.
I set up single-click shortcuts on the home screen so I can watch YouTube on the secondary screen while scrolling either Facebook or Twitter on the main screen and save some taps. (I could then set the Velvet to “laptop” and watch full-screen YouTube on the propped-up screen.)
My only wish here is for the ability to launch two split-screen apps on the phone’s screen, so I could still watch videos on the secondary screen while scrolling socials on the right (split screen isn’t allowed on the left screen, for some reason).
Richard Lai / Engadget
Another handy Dual Screen feature is Wide View, which stretches a single app across both screens. The list of compatible apps is still rather short, though — just the core apps from Google, at the moment. The feature makes sense for Chrome, Gmail, Maps and Photos, so long as you don’t mind the hilariously wide gap between the two screens.
Going back to the phone itself, the Velvet will launch in six colors with more to come later. The low-key “New Black” unit I received had a glossy ceramic-like finish. The tapered edges and back help make the Velvet look even slimmer than it already is.
To be specific, the Velvet comes in at just 7.9mm thick and 180g heavy, noticeably smaller and lighter than the V60 — which packs an identical 6.8-inch 2,460 x 1,080 P-OLED screen.
Part of that is courtesy of the Snapdragon 765G processor which, despite being a midrange chipset, is the first Qualcomm silicon to integrate a 5G modem, saving a bit of space inside the device. Alas, the trade-off here is a 4,300mAh battery, which is significantly smaller than the V60’s 5,000mAh. This may be fine for the phone, given the less-demanding processor, but I doubt it’d be sufficient for all-day use in dual-screen mode.
Richard Lai / Engadget
The rest of the Velvet is very much a midrange device elevated by some premium features. You still get an in-display fingerprint reader, microSD expansion, stereo speakers and IP68 protection against dust and liquids. As with all LG flagships, the Velvet comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack, which isn’t often on other brands’ flagships.
Compared to the pricier V60, it misses the extra processing power, extra battery, faster LPDDR5 RAM and WiFi 6 — but that’s fine. I just wish LG could do something about the slightly laggy scrolling experience. To be fair, I am accustomed to the silky smooth 120Hz display on my current phone, the (more expensive) Oppo Find X2 Pro, but I think LG could make improvements to the touch response, scrolling and animation speeds within Android. Likewise, there’s room for improvement with gesture navigation — I don’t understand why LG wouldn’t let me use the back gesture within the virtual keyboard area.
Richard Lai / Engadget
On the photography side, the Velvet has a totally different set of cameras to previous LG phones. While I’m a fan of the “raindrop” camera arrangement on the back (as opposed to the “camera island” design), my quick test with the 48-megapixel main camera and the 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera produced mediocre results.
It over-sharpened photos and lost details — likely due to noise compression and lack of optical image stabilization (OIS). This was especially true with indoor and night-time shots. They’re OK for a midrange phone, but OK may not be good enough. There’s a lot of competition these days.
Crayta, part party game hub, part game creation tool, sounds like the ideal candidate to beta test state share. The posit is not only to make it easier to share games when you’re playing but also to collaborate with other Stadia users to craft entirely new games. Then, once you’re done, you can share a direct link to your creation, no need to browse through libraries of other people’s creations. For the record, you can do that too.
It works as simply as advertised. I joined states through Discord and messenger apps, and as long as you spelled out your passcode correctly (something that ensures randoms can be kept out of your playthroughs), there’s pretty much nothing to mess up. I think that’s where the Google Docs analogy comes into it. There have been collaborative work tools for decades, but GDocs keeps it simple. State share needs to hold on to this simplicity — and Google needs to put it into more games, even if they’re not quite as complicated as Crayta.
Crayta
I dipped in and out of a couple of shared games and tutorials last week and was admittedly overwhelmed by the game creation part. Some other Stadia users in the same instance as me were already crafting new game levels, completely up to speed with the system, while I just dumped giant dinosaur skulls around, and tried to craft walls and layers with my Stadia controller, not the keyboard and mouse I could have used. (To their credit, the team has even made a tutorial about crafting worlds with only the controller.)
So I might not be a game creator any time soon, but what about the fruits of these tools? In these early days — the game launches in earnest later this week — there’s already an interesting number of games that have lifted ideas from other games. Some worked well, others, well, less. To its credit, with many Crayta games, it feels like you’re just controlling a Fortnite character in a different kind of game — it’s easy to get the basics down.
(Don’t expect everything to look like an over-the-shoulder shooter, however. The creation tools offer plenty of camera freedom, so you can create that isometric game you’ve been dreaming of.)
The team behind Crayta, Unit 2 games, had several games available to test out at this early stage. There was an Overcooked clone, a few ‘Capture the Flag’ games and another title where you had to overcome a giant wall barrelling towards you and the rest of the competition. My particular favorite is ‘Prop Hunt’. If you’ve never heard of it (and games like it have appeared elsewhere) it’s like a silly version of Prey where you can transform and hide as random objects while other players attempt to hunt you down.
Crayta
The potential here could be great ideas that are easy to execute with Crayta’s tools. The team has gone to great pains to offer plenty of tutorial content and guidance to help learn the ropes here — and there’s a lot to wade through.
Some of these early titles worked less well. ‘Huddle for Warmth’, where you’re tasked with destroying air-con units that are freezing you and the world, is pretty muddled and not all that fun. Your health meter is your body temp, and the more you explore the colder you’ll get. With that limited time (you can always heat up next to your campfire), you have to set off into the frozen tundra to trash some air-con.
Whether you spot another player hinges on whether you spawned at the same campsite or got lucky as you wandered around shooting up flares for help. Without someone by your side, unsurprisingly it’s not much fun repeatedly freezing to death. Other games just played a little wobbly — but these are early games on a new tool. I can be patient.
Crayta’s premium edition launches on July 1st, with 500 credits of in-game currency for skins and items. The team is also promising “seasonal post-launch content” through the rest of the year. It’s free to Stadia Pro subscribers, but if you’re on the free tier, the base version costs $39.99.
It feels like Zwift has been building up to this moment. The startup offers an app with virtual worlds that runners, cyclists and triathletes can traverse using their personal treadmill or bike trainer. A virtual avatar will match their performance at home — speeding up when they jog or pedal faster, and dropping off when their legs start to tire — and take other factors like drafting into account. Some treadmills and trainers will also adjust their angle slightly to match the slope that you’re trying to climb.
Zwift has a free run and riding mode, as well as structured workouts and competitive races. Professional cyclists have embraced the latter during COVID-19, and Zwift has respond by putting on additional events that can be watched on its YouTube channel. These broadcasts don’t have the same production values as the Overwatch League or League of Legends European Championship (LEC), but it’s something that cycling fans have been able to latch onto during a tumultuous period for the industry.
Zwift events are different from traditional races — turning is automated, for instance, and it’s harder to sense when another rider might attack. Some Zwift events have Mario Kart-style power-ups, too, that let the rider turn invisible, become lighter, or increase the effects of drafting temporarily. Zwift isn’t concerned about absolute realism and most cyclists have accepted that the platform requires some fresh thinking and strategies.
The competition will be held over six stages that each take roughly an hour to complete.
The virtual Tour de France should be Zwift’s biggest event yet. The competition will be held over six stages that each take roughly an hour to complete. Men and women will race separately, just like real life, but compete over identical courses. The first two stages will take place in Watopia — a fictional world that Zwift developed for its broader running and cycling community — with “several visual additions” inspired by Nice, the coastal town that will host the tour’s ‘Grand Départ’ in real life.
Zwift
The race will then shift to a France map built specifically for the virtual tour. The final stage, meanwhile, will mimic real life with a Paris circuit that loops around the Champs-Élysées and Arc de Triomphe.
Zwift and ASO, the real-life Tour de France organizer, want the event to have a celebratory atmosphere. That’s not to say the races won’t be competitive, though. Twenty-three men’s teams have signed up for the event, including the tour’s reigning champion Egan Bernal and former winners Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome. The women’s competition will be equally fierce, with 17 professional teams that include superstar rider Marianne Vos and Olympic gold medallist Anna van der Breggen.
Like the real-life tour, riders will be able to compete for the green (best sprinter), polka dot (best climber), white (best rookie), and yellow (overall winner) jerseys. Every category will be decided on points — differing from the real-life tour, which uses time to decide the yellow jersey — and all of the scores will be pooled together to decide the best overall team. Zwift chose this system so squads can rotate riders between the various stages.
Zwift
Zwift says the competition will be shown on its website, the Global Cycling Network (GCN) app, and via TV broadcasters in over 130 countries. These include Eurosport (Europe), EurosportAsia (Asia), NBCSN (US), FloBikes (Canada), SBS (Australia), Zhibo.tv (China) and J Sports (Japan). These partnerships are a massive opportunity for Zwift to prove that its platform should be taken seriously. Virtual racing can’t replace real-world cycling, but there’s a chance it could become a complimentary esport that helps teams diversify their revenue and weather difficult financial downturns.
“Today, esports for us is the athletes competing from the comfort of their homes,” Eric Min, CEO of Zwift said on the CyclingTips Podcast last month. “Because of the situation that we’re in. The future of it is, let’s go into an arena with 30,000 or 40,000 people, where we can sell tickets, concessions and broadcast rights. That is the end state.”
It’s not all about the pros, though. The virtual tour will have a side event for amateurs called the Virtual l’Etape du Tour de France. Every weekend, Zwift will take a single stage designed for the elite riders (the first weekend will offer stage two of the virtual tour, for instance) and run 16 “mass participation” sessions throughout Saturday and Sunday. In theory, these will give casual and club-level cyclists a small taste of the Tour de France and a time or score they can directly compare with the professionals.
The virtual Tour will be part of Tour de France United, a series of events and initiatives that will raise money for five charity partners: Emmaüs, Secours Populaire, Jeugdfonds Sport and Cultuur, BiJeWa and Qhubeka.
Will Zwift racing ever supplant the real-life Tour? Probably not. But if the worst happens and the physical Tour de France is cancelled this year, at least fans will have some kind of replacement to watch and remember.
Of course, Apple’s up to the fifth iteration of its Watch Series now, so the older Series 3 is a budget option for those shopping for a smartwatch. It’s missing some of the Series’ newer features, such as ECG measurement, fall detection and an always-on display, but everything else you need is there. We scored it a respectable 82 points in our comprehensive hands-on back in 2017, with reviewer Chris Velazco noting its solid performance, great battery life and valuable fitness features, including accurate heartrate and activity tracking.
If anything, most of our gripes (of which there were few) stemmed from the Series 3’s LTE compatibility. This Amazon deal applies to the GPS version only, so some of the issues we noted — dubious call quality and the 10 bucks a month LTE charge, for example — aren’t applicable here. Indeed, Chris said he felt like the Series 3 represents Apple’s wearable coming into its own after the company’s first two attempts.
If you’re after a decent smartwatch, you could do far worse than the Apple Watch Series 3, especially at this price. Sure, the Series 5 offers newer and fancier features, but if you just need the basics — packaged up in a lightweight and attractive design, at that — this all-time low offer could be the one for you.
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The first ever Premier league football match to stream on Twitch will air tonight, with Crystal Palace versus Burnley at 7:30pm BST. The game — which will be streamed on Twitch by Amazon UK — marks a significant evolution for the platform, which until now has been primarily designed for video games and esports. We’ve seen football on Twitch before, but not in a competition the size of the Premier league.
The move also demonstrates a concerted effort by Amazon to get its football coverage in front of a wider audience. The company is already streaming some Premier League matches (including Crystal Palace versus Burnley) for free on Prime, presumably in a bid position itself as a legitimate destination for sports — airing games on Twitch gives would-be Prime subscribers more flexibility. At this stage, however, Amazon’s games will only be streaming on Twitch for UK users, although if it proves successful we could see a similar model roll out to sports in the US, too. Follow the PrimeVideo channel on Twitch to watch along.
