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As Twitter continues to figuratively kneecap itself by limiting tweet views, Meta is hustling to bring its Twitter rival to reality. A listing for an app called Threads was spotted on the iOS App Store with an estimated release date of July 6th. In May, a report said the microblogging service was nearing completion and could be out as soon as the end of June. While an end-of-June launch didn't quite happen, the app could arrive when Twitter users are more willing (and maybe even eager) to finally jump ship.
Twitter boss Elon Musk announced at the weekend that verified accounts — which translates to paying users — can read 6,000 posts daily, while non-paying users can only read 600. He said the website is adopting the measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation."
From both the app listing and rumors, we’re expecting Threads will migrate your followers and circles from your existing Instagram handle, ensuring you should have an active timeline right from the outset. That is, if you’re an Instagram user.
– Mat Smith
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Amazon is offering a $5 credit when you buy a $50 eGift card for Prime Day
Blue Origin is planning to open new launch sites outside the US
Tidal is increasing its HiFi plan to $11 per month
The best mobile microphones for 2023
Since smartphones started eating casual photography’s lunch, camera makers have focused on devices designed for very specific uses. Action cams provide sharp, fluid video. Compact cameras target both tourists and vloggers. And DSLRs are available at some of the best prices we’ve seen. Then there are mirrorless cameras, which continue to improve their autofocus and video. And that’s where some guidance helps. Whether you’re a creator looking for just the right vlogging camera, an aspiring wildlife photographer or a sports enthusiast, we’ll help you find the perfect camera to match your budget and needs.
Remember the early days of the AI hype train, when everyone spent their time making stupid images using text prompts? If you want to recapture the nostalgic haze of, uh, late 2022, Picsart has you covered. The popular image editor just launched an AI-powered animated GIF generator, calling the tool its “most unhinged” platform yet. Type a bunch of nonsense into the chat box, wait a minute or so and marvel at your “chaotic and eccentric” creation. The platform’s integrated into the regular Picsart app and is available for iOS, Android devices and on the web.
If you've been having trouble using Twitter recently, you aren't alone — the service has been having issues since it started limiting the daily number of posts users could view. Although many of the platform's issues stabilized over the weekend, TweetDeck remains broken unless users switch to the beta version of the list aggregator. Now, Twitter is gearing up to solve the issue by making that beta version of TweetDeck the main version. According to Twitter Support, the feature will become exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers in the near future, noting that "in 30 days, users must be Verified to access TweetDeck."
There really is an HBO show on Netflix. All five seasons of Issa Rae's highly acclaimed comedy-drama series Insecure are now streaming on Netflix in the US. Even more HBO shows are on the way, too. Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Six Feet Under and Ballers are also coming to Netflix as part of the deal, the company told Deadline. Meanwhile, Netflix users outside the US can stream True Blood on the service.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-metas-instagram-linked-twitter-rival-could-arrive-this-week-111508536.html?src=rss
Threads
Screenshots of the iPhone screen showing a new app called Threads by Meta.
If you're looking for a high-quality 4K streaming stick, look no further. Amazon's best model, the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, is on sale for Prime Day at an all-time low of $25, a full 55 percent off the regular price. And if even that is slightly too expensive, Amazon has also discounted the regular Fire TV Stick 4K by 54 percent to $23 (also an all-time low). Finally, if you want the most streaming power possible, the Fire TV Cube is on sale for $110 ($30) off — once again the cheapest price we've ever seen.
The best deal by a long shot is the Fire TV Stick 4K Max, though, with a steep $30 discount that makes it just $2 more than the Fire TV Stick 4K. It's Amazon’s most powerful streaming stick, thanks to a faster processor that delivers 40 percent more power than the one in the Fire TV Stick 4K. That translates to faster app start times and more fluid menu navigation, for a better overall experience. The Fire TV Sitck 4K Max also comes with WiFi 6 connectivity, as well as support for Dolby Vision, HDR, HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos audio, along with Alexa commands via the Alexa Voice Remote.
While not quite as zippy, the Fire TV Stick 4K is also on sale for $23, or 54 percent off. It's a great option if you want a low-profile streaming device that can handle 4K content. It also supports Dolby Vision and HDR, and comes with the Alexa Voice Remote, which lets you search for and launch content with voice commands. Frankly though, for the extra $2, I'd grab the Fire TV Stick 4K Max.
The Fire TV Cube (which is rarely discounted much) is on sale at an all-time low price of $110 (21 percent off). It's Amazon's most powerful streaming device with a hexa-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It supports 4K, HDR content with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, and it has picture-in-picture live view as well. You're also getting hands-free Alexa controls, too, which means the Cube's built-in speaker will hear and recognize your commands to turn off your lights or check the weather, even with your TV off.
Finally, if you want to upgrade your remote on any Fire TV device, the Alexa Remote Pro is on sale for $28, or 20 percent off the regular price. It features a backlight and programmable buttons, but the most useful feature is the Remote Finder, which lets you ask Alexa to trigger a noise if decides to play hide and seek. And if you want to save a few more bucks on top of these all-time low prices, don't forget that Amazon is offering a $5 credit with the purchase of a $50 eGift Card.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazons-fire-tv-stick-4k-max-falls-to-25-in-early-prime-day-streaming-sale-103554549.html?src=rss
Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K Max falls to $25 in early Prime Day streaming sale
Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K Max falls to $25 in early Prime Day streaming sale
George Orwell, review of Mein Kampf (1940):
Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all “progressive” thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them “I offer you struggle, danger and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet. Perhaps later on they will get sick of it and change their minds, as at the end of the last war. After a few years of slaughter and starvation “Greatest happiness of the greatest number” is a good slogan, but at this moment “Better an end with horror than a horror without end” is a winner. Now that we are fighting against the man who coined it, we ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.
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Linda Button| Longreads | July 4, 2023 | 15 minutes (3,167 words)
Momo
She filled our lives with good food,
chutzpah, laughter, and love.
Enh. I could sense Momo looking over my shoulder as I typed, her head wrapped in a bright coral scarf. I was relieved she had put on weight since death. The final month her skin had hung on her, a size too big. She was back to her firm, long-legged self, her dark eyes bright with interest.
“Enh?!” I said.
I like where you’re going, but the words aren’t right.
This was what we had always done for each other—poked and questioned and haggled over art. Still, I felt the pressure of the deadline. “Your husband needs this in four days. I‘ve got to get the ball rolling.”
Momo shrugged. You’re the writer.
What did she know? Inside I harbored a delicious fantasy that my words would cause the audience—Momo’s friends and sisters, her husband, Marty, and their daughter—to ooooh at how I had captured her gusto on a tombstone.
For most of my career I have written ad copy. The work suits me. Constraints. The single page of paper. Brevity. Choose as few words as possible. Let the visuals tell the story. Conjure emotion in compressed space and time. Here, then, was the perfect writing assignment for me. A three- by two-foot billboard. Thirty words, max. My business partner’s epitaph.
But unlike advertising, lofted into the airwaves to evaporate, this project would be carved into granite for eternity. I yearned to create a gravestone that would sing through the ages, that would capture the joie de vivre that was my partner. One year later, Momo’s death still had me reeling. I had worked with her for two decades. I loved her. I considered Marty, her husband of only a few years, a latecomer to the Momo party. Now, for this assignment, he was also the client. He had final say, after all: When it comes to customs of death, spouses top all others. According to Jewish tradition, the time had come to inscribe the grave marker. A literal deadline.
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Marty had procrastinated for months. So, at the request of friends, I was pitching in. The final words were due by the end of the week. Could I deliver genius in five days?
Momo was right. The copy was “enh.” I emailed the lines to Marty anyway—She filled our lives with good food, chutzpah, laughter, and love—and hoped he would embrace it.
Momo and I had run an ad agency together. She was a seize-the-day daughter of Holocaust survivors; I was bred from stoic Yankee stock. When our agency dwindled to two, we embraced our differences and renamed the business Tooth and Nail. She, the smile. Me, driving home the point. We spread out giant sheets of paper on her dining room floor for brainstorms, plotted campaigns on her sofa, pilfered images off the internet, fought, competed, stepped over each other’s words, slashed ideas, fretted over stubborn, uninspired clients, and laughed about our men.
In the early days, on train rides home from New York to Boston, Momo would find a table for four and unfurl her coat onto the adjoining seat so no one would join us, while I tucked my backpack around my shoes, not wanting to take an inch more than I had paid for. The coastline scrolled by. She counseled me on my imploding marriage; I marveled over her athletic dating. “Who should I choose?” she asked. “The heart surgeon who’s analytical, or the brain expert who’s all heart?”
“Which one brings you joy?” I knew enough to ask that question. Momo chased pleasure, splurging on business class and nice hotels. She spent far more energy on my happiness than I did. She gifted me photographs of tulips exploding in red and orange, a painting of a woman treading a gray ocean, her nose barely above the surface, as if Momo saw beauty in me but also my struggles. She extended a life raft. She cooked homemade matzoh ball soup steaming with ginger and fennel, she listened deeply, as the best therapists do. I left our conversations feeling both filled and emptied, cleansed and heard.
Finally, she chose Marty, the psychiatrist who strummed classical guitar and wrote her love letters from his neglected house near the shore.
Then, the mammogram revealed a 2.2-centimeter lump. Cue the mastectomies, chemo and radiation, wigs and thinning eyebrows. Momo rejected that as her entire story. For seven years after her diagnosis, Momo made even cancer an adventure. She wrote a blog.
Am I upset over the possibility of losing a breast? Not really. I’ve had a terrific pair for 48 years. My girls have given me and many boys great pleasure.
She treated loss as a punch line, no topic too intimate.
On Monday I took a shower and quickly realized that I won’t be scheduling any bikini waxes in the near future.
In advertising we start with the audience and consider how we want to make them feel. Who would trudge the slope to visit Momo’s gravesite each year? Her loyal circle of friends, surely. Her three older sisters, each a variation of Momo: artistic, smart, empathetic. And, of course, her 13-year-old daughter and round-shouldered Marty, his AirPods filled with classical guitar. I imagined her quiet, sarcastic daughter cresting the hill and I wanted to reward her with a smile, to feel the warmth, sechel, and humor of her mom embracing her.
Amazingly, when I look back, I did not follow my own best practices. I did no research on tombstones, threw out no wide net. I suffered from tunnel vision—exactly what I warn young writers never to do—and got stuck on a single idea. Had I bothered, I would have discovered a wide field of possibilities; it turns out that epitaphs trace the arc of history with tales of society, legacies, and stories of power and love.
From traditional Jewish blessings . . .
“May her soul be bound in the binding of life.”
and Japanese poetry . . .
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
. . . to good old sardonic American.
Here lies Butch, we planted him raw,
he was quick on the trigger, but slow on the draw.
We could have honored Momo’s philosophy, She was bubbles in the champagne of life, or captured her perseverance: Grit and Grace, or something risqué, pulled from her own blog. “I won’t be scheduling any bikini waxes in the near future.”
I could have offered Marty an array of choices, mocked up what the stone would look like, handed him a scotch, and nudged him in the right direction. Instead, I worried and clung to one idea. Grief stuffed me into a small, hardened box.
I was thinking of something more inspiring.
Marty’s response waited for me the next morning. In advertising, where writing is a team sport, my ego had long ago shrunk to a chickpea. Still. Ouch. He sent examples of quotes he considered inspiring.
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” —Dr. Seuss
“In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” —Abraham Lincoln
“The pain passes. The beauty remains.” —Renoir
My stomach curdled with disappointment. I hated when clients reached for clichés. Also, I was pretty sure Old Abe never said that. Momo leaned across and squinted at the text. She turned to me with a look between constipation and impatience: What do these dead white guys have to do with a hot, middle-aged diva?
“Right?!” I nodded even though I got where Marty was coming from. When a star collapses and sucks up light and life you need big mother constellations like Abe Lincoln and Dr. Seuss on your side. Marty was crazy in love with Momo. He proposed in her throes of dying and adopted her daughter. Not so crazy.
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But he wasn’t there when Momo first brought her daughter home from China, the same year I gave birth to my youngest child. He hadn’t watched our kids grow up to be best friends. He wasn’t with us, looking down on giant sheets of paper, pulling ideas from the air, creating a company while taking turns with after-school pickup. Where was he when we got The History Channel clients snockered on vodka at a creative presentation on Russian tzars, or when Momo snored through a conference call, and we claimed it was a leaf blower?
My hand hovered over the keyboard. Momo was still making that face. I marshaled my diplomacy and shot a note back to Marty.
The Renoir quote is lovely—haven’t heard it before. How about this:
Momo
She filled our lives with chutzpah, laughter, and love.
“The pain passes. The beauty remains.” —Renoir
Marty didn’t respond. The day ticked by.
In her last month I had wheeled Momo around the block, past her front yard where a gardener friend had fashioned a river of smooth stones. Momo did not admire the curving white through her lawn, or the blaze of yellow leaves outside her windows. She curled inward with pain. Now that it was my turn to lavish her with support and comfort, I had no words. I spoke to her as if to a child. “Isn’t that tree beautiful!”
“Take me home,” she said.
Her office had been turned into a sickroom, a large bed and TV at one end. Her sisters had arrived from Israel, Dominica, and Maine and tightened around her. They filled the kitchen with music, took turns dressing her, served up platters of hummus and opinions. They, and her other friends, somehow understood the rituals of grief, care, and mitzvah. Their religion was seeped in loss and optimism. They practiced simple, concrete gestures. But I didn’t even know what to do with my hands. I felt useless, as if I had gone from insider to outsider. I’ve been here all along, I wanted to say to them. Momo and I, we helped each other. She offered me refuge from my unraveling marriage. I gave her purpose.
The night she passed, I left my phone in the living room. When I woke, messages from her friends and sisters spilled down my screen. Voice mails. Texts. “Come to the hospital!” “Hurry!” I had slept while my friend died.
Another day, nothing.
“He hates it,” I said.
Oh, you know Marty. Momo waved her hand. He’s a BFD at the hospital. He’s probably curing ADHD and seasonal depression.
“After years of pounding me on deadlines, you’re giving him a pass?”
He’s a genius, they need more time.
Ouch, I thought. Double whammy.
The morning of the deadline, my email dinged.
This is what I woke up with at 4 AM:
Mother, wife, negotiator, artist, cook, adventurer.
Forever bold, stylish, and brave.
“The pain passes. The beauty remains.” —Renoir
Thoughts? Marty.
Lists. The final refuge of the desperate, the last gasp of clients when they’d run out of ideas or lacked imagination. Marty had reduced Momo to a string of nouns, adjectives, and commas, as if that defined her. Plus, Wife was the second word?
Momo beamed. Stylish. Adventurer! Marty’s so good with words, isn’t he?
That’s what love does, I muttered to myself. It infuses mediocre writing with sentiment. “He left off sister. Friend!”
Momo frowned. Gotta include them. Maybe we need an extra tall slab. Fit everything in.
I pounded a response on the keyboard.
Oh, those 4am thoughts!
I would add friend, sister, businesswoman . . . and the list gets long. Maybe focus on how she made us feel? xoxo
How did Momo make me feel? She had taught me that moments live in the flickering gold light of a beech tree and a bowl of warm soup. That loss waits for all of us, so we’d better wring happiness from every second. Death had robbed me of my witness, my confidant, the most honest friend I ever had. She never lied to me about my situation. Or herself. How many lovers have you had? I had asked her when I started dating again. She looked off to the corner of the restaurant, counting. “Sixty? Eighty? I had fun.” Would I ever squeeze so much out of life? She left nothing on the table.
What did I give her? My doggedness. My drive. My craving for partnership, as if I was born incomplete. I gave her my standing in the industry. My fierce competitiveness. My soundless, grateful love.
I went to make coffee. Marty’s response waited in my inbox.
It doesn’t work to say how she made us feel. We need to convey who she was. Funny, I left off sister and friend as her middle sister thought that it would be unnecessary, but it’s a key part of who Momo was. I was hoping that negotiator and artist would cover who she was as a businessperson.
Off to the eye doctor.
Ah, he was pulling in Momo’s sisters. A classic zone defense move by the client. I poured contempt onto the page.
New glasses? Hope you’re seeing more clearly now. Give me a call . . .
What do you think, Momo? I looked around the room and discovered her missing. Marty never responded either. But a tombstone deadline does not melt away like some canceled ad campaign.
The morning of the unveiling broke crisp and bright, the kind of April day we long for after the gray length of winter. A brightly colored square, rippling in the sunlight, waited for us. Someone had swathed the tombstone in scarves. The wind lifted the corners, flirting and winking, to reveal edges of letters. What was written there? When I had asked Marty the night before at a gathering in their home, he shrugged and said, “Something like in the email.”
Momo had handpicked her site. Even the year before, as we tipped clumps of earth onto her casket, weeping, we admired the location. It faced a protected edge of the graveyard.
Now, a year later, grass had grown over the mound. The trees plumped with buds and sunlight flickered through new green leaves. The rabbi, a short, bearded man, gestured for us to draw close. Marty stood with their daughter, his arm around her. I expected Momo to leap out from behind the stone and join us.
We each read something. I had to borrow a quote that morning, too overwhelmed to think. Words. All my life I have wrestled with, debated, and polished them. But how much had they ever mattered? Momo’s sisters approached the stone and unfastened the tape that secured the scarves. My shoulders tensed and my hand squeezed a damp Kleenex in my pocket. As the coral silks pulled away, the epitaph revealed itself from the bottom up. The words were indistinct, unreadable, and I cursed the stonecutter. Then I pushed the tears from my eyes and read the final, stubborn, unfixable inscription.
Momo
Mother. Wife. Sister. Friend.
Negotiator. Artist. Cook. Adventurer.
Forever Bold, Stylish, and Brave.
“The pain passes. The Beauty remains” —Renoir.
November 4, 1958–October 25, 2013
Every word rang true, but they read like a catalog. Writing, I have realized, reflects the writer, not the subject. The tombstone embodied Marty: conflict-averse, hoping to placate everyone. The list did not add up to Momo. I had yearned for bolder art, and my failure said something about me too. I deferred to Marty instead of seizing the moment and creating art worthy of this woman, if that was even possible.
Loss had yawned over me the past year with daily reminders of my friend. The plants she had bequeathed to me, now gasping for water, hung from my ceiling; my phone became a minefield of photos and buried emails. I would rifle through contracts or sort through our old projects and feel fresh pinpricks of grief. I turned funny tales from our partnership over until they became smooth, comforting stones in my palm.
I had tried to find another business partner. I needed someone else, I knew that, to keep me from spinning tighter into self-criticism, to slow down and let my feelings catch up, to find happiness for myself, as she had taught me. I even met with a consultant who listened carefully over bad hotel coffee and said “You’re lucky if you get one or two partners like that in a lifetime. Don’t try to replace her—go out and seek many people.” So I found designers, producers, and accountants to help me run the business. I began a relationship with a kind man. Each person filled a hole in my life but, like the litany on the tombstone, couldn’t capture what I had lost. Death had rubbed its heel squarely on what vibrated and flourished between us, ending the world Momo lived in, of possibility, her quicksilver wit, the warmth that rose from her, her push to seek out new adventures.
I closed my eyes and imagined going home and calling Momo and telling her about this day, where we sang songs and prayed and grieved both privately and as a chorus. The group murmured on either side of me. The edge of a cold breeze snuck down my collar. I folded my arms and held myself tighter.
Ach!
“Momo?”
What’s with the waterworks? Life is waiting for you down the hill, my dear.
I never visit Momo’s gravesite, nor do I want to. She sits next to me when I labor over a script or edit a commercial, and even now, as I try to craft this memory of her. I did not have the right words to say to her in her final weeks. I could not conjure poetry for her at her service. My words failed me then, they fail me still, and I keep trying. I want to breathe life back into the shining energy that filled my days. I want to make Momo alive for you on this simple piece of paper.
Do words matter? I visit Momo’s blog and linger over her final post, written weeks before she died. The stamp of that last date floats farther away from me, but the words still leave fresh yearning.
Seven years of debilitating treatments, anxious scan results, and the occasional self-diagnosis. It’s a lot to go through to drop a few pounds. Seven very precious years spent with my magnificent husband, my daughter and stellar friends. Seven years going on eight years with nine years in reach and ten years hardly a stretch.
Knowing all that and still, I live like there is no tomorrow.
Linda Button is a storyteller and writer for a large non-profit. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Magazine, PBS, and elsewhere. Her memoir-in-progress, Fight Song, explores mental illness, martial arts and learning to let go, despite love.
Editor: Krista Stevens
Copy Editor: Peter Rubin
Google has updated its privacy policy to state that it can use publicly available data to help train its AI models. The tech giant has changed the wording of its policy over the weekend and switched "AI models" for "language models." It also stated that it could use publicly available information to build not just features, but full products like "Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities." By updating its policy, it's letting people know and making it clear that anything they publicly post online could be used to train Bard, its future versions and any other generative AI product Google develops.
The tech giant has highlighted the changes to its privacy policy on its archive, but here's a copy of the pertinent part:
Critics have been raising concerns about companies' use of information posted online to train their large language models for generative AI use. Recently, a proposed class action lawsuit was filed against OpenAI, accusing it of scraping "massive amounts of personal data from the internet," including "stolen private information," to train its GPT models without prior consent. As Search Engine Journal notes, we'll likely see plenty of similar lawsuits in the future as more companies develop their own generative AI products.
Owners of websites that could be considered public squares in the digital age have also taken steps to either prevent or profit from the generative AI boom. Reddit has started charging for access to its API, leading third-party clients to shut down over the weekend. Meanwhile, Twitter put a restriction on how many tweets a user sees per day to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-updated-privacy-policy-states-it-can-use-public-data-to-train-its-ai-models-095541684.html?src=rss
Close up or woman using smart phone
Google's Pixel 8 Pro may have been revealed in new photos on Reddit by someone affiliated with Google, DroidLife has reported. The back shows a very Pixel-like camera array along with the rumored body temperature sensor, along with a sticker that reads "for test/evaluation only." Another reads "Zuma - B1," a possible code name for Google's incoming Tensor G3 chip. The front screen, meanwhile, shows a Fastboot Mode indicating 12GB of Samsung LPDDR5 DRAM, 128GB of storage and "husky," a previously revealed codename for the Pixel 8 Pro.
The Pixel 8 Pro is supposed to have a more capable camera array, with a 50-megapixel (MP) Samsung main camera that allows 50 percent more light, and a 64MP ultrawide Sony camera. It also looks to have a flat display, as rumored, rather than a curved one like the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro models. According to yet another leak, it will have a 5,000 mAh battery (roughly the same as the Pixel 7 Pro) and a modest bump from a 23W to a 27W max charging speed.
In a series of posts on Reddit, the poster "annoyingtoread", said that he received it "from the device team in Google for testing." The person then mused that they should perhaps use a throwaway account, and someone replied "you really should, considering that in this account you've even posed pictures of yourself." The original poster subsequently deleted his account.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/googles-pixel-8-pro-prototype-revealed-in-leak-091118014.html?src=rss
Google's Pixel 8 Pro prototype revealed in leak
Google's Pixel 8 Pro prototype revealed in leak
I’m just back from France, where my direct experience of riots and looting was non-existent, although I had walked past a Montpellier branch of Swarkowski the day before it ceased to be. My indirect experience was quite extensive though, since I watched the talking heads on French TV project their instant analysis onto the unfolding anarchy. Naturally, they discovered that all their existing prejudices were entirely confirmed by events. The act that caused the wave of protests and then wider disorder was the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, 17, one of a succession of such acts of police violence against minorites. Another Arab kid from a poor area. French police kill about three times as many people as the British ones do, though Americans can look away now.
One of the things that makes it difficult for me to write blogs these days is the my growing disgust at the professional opinion-writers who churn out thought about topics they barely understand, coupled with the knowledge that the democratization of that practice, about twenty years ago, merely meant there were more people doing the same. And so it is with opinion writers and micro-bloggers about France, a ritual performance of pre-formed clichés and positions, informed by some half-remembered French history and its literary and filmic representations (Les Misérables, La Haine), and, depending on the flavour you want, some some Huntingtonian clashing or some revolting against structural injustice. Francophone and Anglophone commentators alike, trapped in Herderian fantasies about the nation, see these events as a manifestation of essential Frenchness that tells us something about that Frenchness and where it is heading to next. Rarely, we’ll get a take that makes some comparison to BLM and George Floyd.
I even read some (British) commentator opining that what was happening on French estates was “unimaginable” to British people. Well, not to this one, who remembers the wave of riots in 1981 (wikipedia: “there was also rioting in …. High Wycombe”) and, more recently, the riots in 2011 that followed the police shooting of a young black man, Mark Duggan, and where protest against police violence and racism soon spilled over into country-wide burning and looting, all to be followed by a wave of repression and punitive sentencing, directed by (enter stage left) Keir Starmer. You can almost smell the essential Frenchness of it all.
There is much to despair about in these French evenements. Police racism is real and unaddressed, and the situation people, mostly from minorities, on peripheral sink estates, is desperate. Decades of hand-wringing and theorizing, together with a few well-meaning attempts to do something have led nowhere. Both politicians and people need the police (in its varied French forms) to be the heroic front line of the Republican order against the civilizational enemy, and so invest it with power and prestige – particularly after 2015 when there was some genuine police heroism and fortitude during the Paris attacks – but then are shocked when “rogue elements” employ those powers in arbitrary and racist violence. But, no doubt, the possibility of cracking a few black and Arab heads was precisely what motivated many of them to join up in the first place.
On the other side of things, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and La France Insoumise are quite desperate to lay the mantle of Gavroche on teenage rioters excited by the prospect of a violent ruck with the keufs, intoxicated by setting the local Lidl on fire and also keen on that new pair of trainers. (Fun fact: the Les Halles branch of Nike is only yards from the fictional barricade where Hugo had Gavroche die.) There may be something in the riots as inarticulate protest against injustice theory, but the kids themselves were notably ungrateful to people like the LFI deputy Carlos Martens Bilongo whose attempts to ventriloquise their resistance were rewarded with a blow on the head. Meanwhile, over at the Foxisant TV-station C-News, kids looting Apple stores are the vanguard of the Islamist Great Replacement, assisted by the ultragauche. C-News even quote Renaud Camus.
Things seem to be calming down now, notably after a deplorable attack on the home of a French mayor that left his wife with a broken leg after she tried to lead her small children to safety. As a result, the political class have closed ranks in defence of “Republican order” since “democracy itself” is now under threat. I think one of the most tragic aspects of the last few days has been the way in which various protagonists have been completely sincere and utterly inauthentic at the same time. The partisans of “Republican order” and “democracy” perform the rituals of a system whose content has been evacuated, yet they don’t realise this as they drape tricolours across their chests. With political parties gone or reduced to the playthings of a few narcissistic leaders, mass absention in elections, the policy dominance of a super-educated few, and the droits de l’homme at the bottom of the Mediterranean, what we have is a kind of zombie Republicanism. Yet the zombies believe, including that all French people, regardless of religion or race, are true equals in the indivisible republic. At the same time, those cheering on revolt and perhaps some of those actually revolting, sincerly believing in the true Republicanism of their own stand against racism and injustice, even as the kids pay implicit homage to the consumer brands in the Centres Commerciaux. But I don’t want to both-sides this: the actual fighting will die down but there will be war in the Hobbesian sense of a time when the will to contend by violence is sufficiently known, until there is justice for boys like Nahel and until minorities are really given the equality and respect they are falsely promised in France, but also in the UK and the US. Sadly, the immediate prospect is more racism and more punishment as the reaction to injustice is taken as the problem that needs solving.
Amazon has the Blink Mini for a mere $17.50 in an early Prime Day deal — half off the security camera’s $35 sticker price. The small plug-in device can give you extra peace of mind while you’re away from home, letting you check in remotely to ensure your space is free from intruders (or talk to your pets using its two-way audio). The lower price for Prime Day could make it easier to set up a fleet of them in your home without breaking the bank.
Unlike the more expensive Blink Indoor, the Blink Mini is a plug-in device, so make sure you have a nearby power outlet or can run an extension cord to the area where you’ll set it up. The Blink Mini offers 1080p capture, infrared night vision and optional phone alerts if it senses motion while armed. Setup is straightforward, only requiring a few minutes of following instructions in the Blink app to connect it to WiFi. However, the camera only works with Amazon Alexa, so you may want to look at competing products in Engadget’s Smart Home Guide if you rely on Siri or Google Assistant for voice control.
If you’re more interested in monitoring your yard or entrance, Amazon also has the Blink Outdoor for half off as part of the same early Prime Day deal. Usually $100, you can snag it today for $50. The “weather-resistant” wireless camera records in 1080p and can last up to an estimated two years on a pair of AA batteries. Remember that you’ll need a Blink Sync Module 2 and a Blink Subscription to save your recorded photos and videos to the cloud with this model.
Finally, this Blink Video Doorbell bundle — which includes the Sync Module 2 — is on sale for $47.49 (usually $95.) Like the other devices, it supports 1080p live video with nighttime infrared support and can run for up to two years on a couple of AA batteries. Amazon also describes it as weather-resistant, with a seal protecting it against water. Setup can vary, depending on whether you connect it wired or wirelessly, but either way, the Blink app will guide you through the steps. And if you opt for the simpler wireless setup, you can configure it to use a Blink Mini to play a chime indoors when someone visits.
Amazon has deals on several other Blink bundles as well. You can check out the entire sale for the full details.
Your Prime Day Shopping Guide: See all of our Prime Day coverage. Shop the best Prime Day deals on Yahoo Life. Follow Engadget for the best Amazon Prime Day tech deals. Learn about Prime Day trends on In the Know. Hear from Autoblog’s car experts on must-shop auto-related Prime Day deals and find Prime Day sales to shop on AOL, handpicked just for you.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-discounts-the-blink-mini-by-50-percent-in-an-early-prime-day-deal-070938182.html?src=rss
Blink Mini
Marketing photo for the Blink Mini indoor security camera. The camera has a black front face and a white body. It’s facing the right with a power cord fading off to the left.
We've known for quite a while that Meta has been building a Twitter competitor, but now we have a more solid idea of when it will become available. A listing for the app called Threads has popped up in the iOS App Store with an estimated release date of July 6th. In May, a report came out saying that the microblogging service was nearing completion and could be out as soon as the end of June. While an end-of-June launch didn't quite happen, the app could be arriving at a time when Twitter users are more willing (and maybe even eager) to try an alternative.
Twitter recently put a cap on how many tweets an unverified account can read per day. In a post, Elon Musk announced that verified accounts — which translates to paying users — can read 6,000 posts a day, while unverified/nonpaying users can only read 600. He said the website is adopting the measure to "address extreme levels of data scraping [and] system manipulation." A regular user can easily hit 600 posts, so people who haven't been paying $8 to $11 a month for blue checkmark have been getting locked out of their feeds as a result.
Meta describes Threads as "Instagram's text-based conversation app." Based on the screenshots posted in the listing, users can keep their Instagram handle and follow the same accounts they follow on the photo-sharing platform. That means users will have a pre-existing following and circles on the new app, giving it an edge over other Twitter rivals. Users will also be able to choose the privacy of their posts and make them visible to anyone, to the profiles they follow or only to the accounts they mention. They will be able to heart, send and share other people's posts, as well.
Previous reports said Meta's Twitter competitor would be a decentralized service that's compatible with Mastodon, but it's unclear if that's still the case when it launches. We'll know for sure within a few days.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/metas-instagram-linked-twitter-rival-threads-could-arrive-on-july-6th-063129168.html?src=rss
Threads
Screenshots of the iPhone screen showing a new app called Threads by Meta.
The-Promise-Walker-Henry-Scott-Tuke-Oil-Painting
nathannobis
Henry Scott Tuke's painting "The Promise" (1888).
Editor’s note: For Independence day this year, please enjoy Carson Holloway’s timeless review of Steven F. Hayward’s Patriotism Is Not Enough: Harry Jaffa, Walter Berns, and the Arguments that Redefined American Conservatism, from our archives (originally publish July 5, 2017).
The presidency of Donald Trump raises the question of patriotism more forcefully than it has been raised for a long time in American politics. On the one hand, Trump and his followers think of their movement as a restoration of a proper patriotism, an effort to rescue a country and a people, the true interests of which have been shamefully neglected by an excessively cosmopolitan elite. On the other hand, Trump’s critics think that he appeals to a dangerously atavistic nationalism, an unenlightened and extreme love of country that neglects our duties to the world community. Thus the Trump movement and the controversy it has created force us to ask: what is a just and reasonable patriotism? More specifically, what kind of patriotism is appropriate to a country like America, which is founded on universal principles and not on any particular and exclusive ethnic or religious identity?
This question is especially relevant for American conservatives. In general, patriotism looms larger in the minds of conservatives than in the minds of their liberal counterparts. Conservatism is about preserving, as much as circumstances permit, the country we have inherited, and such an enterprise necessarily presupposes patriotism—a loving approval of that country’s way of life and a desire to see it safely extended into the future. This is not to say that American liberals are unpatriotic. It is just that their patriotism is rendered more complicated, and perhaps more qualified, by their commitment to progress—which necessarily entails a belief that the country is imperfect, and hence more in need of improvement than of preservation—and by their commitment to cosmopolitanism—which leads them to think in terms of political obligations aside from, and maybe in some cases more compelling than, those they owe to their country.
The present question of patriotism is also more compelling for American conservatives simply because the Trump phenomenon arose on their own political turf. Trump is not a conventional American conservative, but his movement is certainly of the right. He has, for the present at least, taken over the traditional political instrument of American conservatism, the Republican Party. His candidacy first swept aside his conservative opposition and then co-opted a good deal of it. These reasons, too, force conservatives to ask themselves whether they can support the kind of patriotism to which Trump has so successfully appealed.
In this context, American conservatives—and anyone interested in American politics—should welcome the publication of Steven F. Hayward’s Patriotism Is Not Enough: Harry Jaffa, Walter Berns, and the Arguments that Redefined American Conservatism. As his subtitle indicates, Hayward’s book offers in the first place an account of the intellectual journey of Jaffa and Berns, two students of Leo Strauss who became in their generation two of the leading scholars of American political thought and the American regime. Unlike their great teacher, however, Berns and Jaffa did not limit their intellectual activity to the realm of scholarly and philosophic inquiry. Strauss was primarily an interpreter of the great texts of the western philosophic canon, seeking to understand them on their own terms and to use them as a springboard for his own philosophizing. He rarely commented at length on any of the political questions of the day. In contrast, Jaffa and Berns chose to be both scholars and public intellectuals, offering commentary from roughly the right side of the political spectrum, Jaffa operating from the Claremont Institute and Berns from the American Enterprise Institute. Accordingly, the story of their thinking, of their agreements and disagreements, is to a considerable extent an account of many of the important issues with which conservative intellectuals have grappled over the last fifty years.
Although Hayward writes with a winning affection for Jaffa and Berns, both of whom he knew personally, his primary aim is not to provide a pair of intellectual biographies. Rather, his main interest lies with the key issues themselves, using Jaffa and Berns’s arguments to explicate them. The book is not and does not claim to be an academic study of Jaffa and Berns’s political thought. Indeed, for whoever wishes to take up the task, a scholarly book (perhaps beginning as a doctoral dissertation) remains to be written on Strauss’s first generation students who took up the study of the American regime, including not only Jaffa and Berns, but also Martin Diamond and Herbert Storing.
Hayward, however, writes here for a more popular audience of thoughtful citizens, offering them an accessible account of the questions that Jaffa and Berns pondered and that played an important role in conservative intellectual debate during their careers: Can modern political science be morally serious without being moralistic, avoiding the extremes of scientistic value neutrality, on the one hand, and ideological fanaticism, on the other? What is statesmanship, and how can it be guided by high principle while also accommodating the intractable imperfections inseparable from political life? To what extent can conservatives look upon Abraham Lincoln as a model of American statesmanship? What role, if any, should natural law and natural rights play in the exercise of the judicial power? Can equality be understood as an intelligible and limited political principle, or must it degenerate into an unreasoning and unquenchable passion?
All of the questions that Hayward explores are of perennial interest to students of American politics. Once again, however, none is of more immediate importance than the question of patriotism and its proper basis, which is a key theme of the book, as its title indicates. What does Hayward mean by asserting that “patriotism is not enough”? He seeks to remind us that, at least for a political community like the United States, a healthy politics requires more than just a sentimental attachment to the country and its interests. As he says, “American patriotism is based on ideas.” Unlike most countries, America was founded at a particular moment in time and, more importantly, on the basis of certain moral and philosophical principles to which its founders dedicated it. American patriotism, therefore, needs to be an enlightened patriotism, in the sense of being informed by knowledge of the founding principles and reflection on how to preserve them and apply them anew in each generation.
Put another way, America has a political identity much more distinct, and much more central to its being, than other nations, many of which have existed for a long time and maintained some kind of stable identity under a variety of regimes. At least until recently, a perfectly good Frenchman might be a republican, a monarchist, a socialist, or a communist. A good American, however, must be committed to a particular political creed: the natural rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence and the republican self-government under law established by the Constitution. Accordingly, American patriotism, and American conservatism, is concerned with understanding and preserving this creed, the way of life to which it gives rise, and the institutions and mores that sustain it. This is the kind of patriotism and conservatism taught by both Harry Jaffa and Walter Berns, whatever disagreements they had on other questions.
Hayward’s book is so timely precisely because the kind of patriotism he discusses provides a useful corrective for Trump-style nationalism. The patriotism to which Trump appeals is almost entirely affective and hardly at all intellectual. As has been observed many times, he almost never refers to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the founding more generally. Instead of meditating on the country’s highest ideals, Trump usually expresses patriotic solicitude for its most elementary needs. He wants America and its citizens to be safe and prosperous.
One can see this, for example, in the way Trump talks about how immigration should be regulated. A conservative in the mold of Jaffa, Berns, and Hayward would remind us that the immigrants we admit should understand, believe in, and have the habits necessary to preserve the doctrine of natural rights and constitutional self-government. Trump has never said anything like this, but has instead simply held that we need to make sure that the immigrants we let in “love our country and love our people.”
As Hayward’s book rightly reminds us, Trump’s emotive patriotism is “not enough.” As a candidate for the presidency, Trump was once asked in what sense he is a conservative. He replied that he wants to “conserve the country.” There is no reason to doubt his sincerity in this. Trump seems to be animated by a genuine protectiveness for America and its citizens. Nevertheless, one has to admit that the country cannot be conserved or preserved without going beyond sentimental patriotism and adding an intellectual appreciation for the founding principles and disciplined thought about how to carry them forward. An America that is safe and prosperous, but not committed to constitutional self-government and natural rights, would no longer be the same country.
This is not to say, however, that there is anything wrong with the kind of patriotism to which Trump appeals. That it is insufficient does not make it irrelevant. Feelings of love for the country one inhabits—irrespective of its regime or form of government—are a natural and just human impulse. Among American statesmen, there has been no greater teacher of philosophic, principled patriotism than Abraham Lincoln. Nevertheless, even Lincoln admitted the legitimacy of the more elementary patriotism to which Trump appeals. In his famous eulogy on Henry Clay, Lincoln noted with approval that Clay loved his country both because it was a “free country” but also in part because it was simply “his own country.”
Moreover, Trumpian patriotism is politically effective not only because it speaks directly to the simple and untutored love of country that any ordinary person feels, but also because it addresses the vital link between the nation’s well-being and the self-interest of individual citizens. Thus Trump denounces certain trade practices, for example, as not only bad for the country, but also as contrary to the economic interests of the working- and middle-class voters whose votes he sought and won. This is, to be sure, not the lofty, principled politics of, say, Lincoln’s effort to preserve respect for the equality of rights promised by the Declaration of Independence. But neither is there anything illegitimate about it by realistic political standards. On the contrary, the American founders themselves recognized and taught openly that most ordinary political activity is animated by self-interest. Thus, when Trump appeals so directly to the economic interests of those whose support he courts, he is only doing what the founders expected that politicians would do as a matter of course.
Accordingly, we can say not only that Hayward’s principled patriotism provides a useful corrective to Trump’s emotive and interest-based nationalism, but also that Trump’s nationalism provides a useful corrective to a patriotism based only on philosophic principle. They are mutually correcting and mutually supportive. On the one hand, a patriotism that is based only on the principles of the founding cannot succeed in winning elections, because voters rightly demand that any political movement that seeks their support have some plausible plan to address their ordinary interests. On the other hand, a patriotism that is based only on the untutored loves and interests of ordinary voters cannot preserve our precious inheritance of a regime based on natural rights, the rule of law, and self-government. A movement that acknowledges each of these concerns amounts to the kind of patriotism, and the kind of conservatism, that can both win elections and deserve to win them.
If you've been having trouble using Twitter recently, you aren't alone — the service has been having issues ever since it started limiting the number of posts users could view each day. Although many of the platform's issues stabilized over the weekend, Tweetdeck remains broken unless users switch to the beta version of the list aggregator. Now, Twitter is gearing up to solve the issue by making that beta version of Tweetdeck the main version, announcing on Monday that it has "launched a new, improved version of Tweetdeck."
We have just launched a new, improved version of TweetDeck. All users can continue to access their saved searches & workflows via https://t.co/2WwL3hNVR2 by selecting “Try the new TweetDeck” in the bottom left menu.
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) July 3, 2023
Some notes on getting started and the future of the product…
Despite officially launching, this "new" Tweetdeck still calls itself the "Tweetdeck Preview" while in app, and users still need to opt-in to using it in the menu of the original Tweetdeck interface. Even so, switching to the new interface does indeed restore basic Tweetdeck functionality for users that rely on its list aggregation features. Twitter says the process should be fairly straightforward as well, promising that saved searches, lists and columns should carry over instantly. Although Twitter says that the updated preview build should now support Twitter Spaces, polls and other features that were previously missing, it notes that Teams functionality is currently unavailable.
Twitter hasn't officially announced that it's retiring the old version of Tweetdeck, but in a thread discussing the issues a Twitter employee suggested the change would be permanent, stating that they were "migrating everyone to the preview version."
Hey folks, looks like the recent changes have broken the legacy TweetDeck, so we're working on migrating everyone to the preview version
— Ben (@ayroblu) July 3, 2023
Although switching to the new version of Tweetdeck potentially resolves the issue, many legacy users may still find themselves without access to the power-user tool in the near future. According to Twitter Support, the feature will become exclusive to Twitter Blue subscribers in the near future, noting that "in 30 days, users must be Verified to access Tweetdeck." It's unclear if that change will be applied to all users in early August, or if all users will have a 30-day trial of the new Tweetdeck before being prompted to subscribe.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-launches-new-tweetdeck-as-the-old-version-breaks-down-231939160.html?src=rss
Twitter Issues
FILE - A sign at Twitter headquarters is shown in San Francisco on Nov. 18, 2022. Thousands of people logged complaints about problems accessing Twitter on Saturday, July 1, 2023, after owner Elon Musk limited most users to viewing 600 tweets a day — restrictions he described as an attempt to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data from the site. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
All 24 Russell Group universities have reviewed their academic conduct policies and guidance
UK universities have drawn up a set of guiding principles to ensure that students and staff are AI literate, as the sector struggles to adapt teaching and assessment methods to deal with the growing use of generative artificial intelligence.
Vice-chancellors at the 24 Russell Group research-intensive universities have signed up to the code. They say this will help universities to capitalise on the opportunities of AI while simultaneously protecting academic rigour and integrity in higher education.
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