Tuesday’s top tech news: a trio of breakages – The Verge

Sony’s PSVR2 teardowns reveal how the headset tracks the Sense controllers

2023-02-14T20:25:56-05:00

The PlayStation VR2 headset can track the accompanying Sense controllers thanks to a bunch of IR LEDs hidden in the orb-shaped controllers, according to new teardown videos Sony posted Tuesday evening.

Under the Sense controller cover, the controller itself has a ring of 14 IR LEDs and three placed elsewhere for tracking, as shown in the Sense teardown video. "These infrared lights are used by the VR headset's tracking camera to detect the controller's position and orientation," Sony's Takeshi Igarashi, who also designed the DualSense controller, explains in the video. "The LEDs have been placed in optimal locations to ensure they are accur …

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Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first

2023-02-14T20:19:46-05:00

This story is based on interviews with people familiar with the events involved and supported by documents obtained by Platformer.

At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers.

"We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform," wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging "@here" in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. "Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post."

When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the e …

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Amazon’s weird toaster-shaped robotaxi hits the road in a ‘first’ for the company

2023-02-14T17:37:08-05:00

Zoox, the autonomous vehicle company owned by Amazon, said that its toaster-shaped driverless vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals was approved to drive on public roads with passengers in California. The company celebrated the milestone as the "first time in history a purpose-built robotaxi - without any manual controls - drove autonomously with passengers."

Zoox is one of dozens of companies currently testing AVs on public roads in the Golden State. And while it trails behind competitors like Waymo and Cruise in the race to commercialize the technology, it is making advancements by introducing a new kind of vehicle to the road - one …

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Spotify’s new activist investor is keeping a close eye on podcast spending

2023-02-14T15:45:00-05:00

This is Hot Pod, The Verge's newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.

I hope you all had a great weekend. Today, we have the final lineup for Hot Pod Summit next week, including a new headliner. Plus, Spotify's new activist investor and Rihanna's post-Super Bowl streaming spike. Let's get into it!

Activist investor takes stake in Spotify, and it is all for company cuts

There is even more pressure for Spotify to be lean now. Last week, it was reported that activist investor ValueAct had purchased a stake in the streamer. Mason Morfit, who leads the firm, disclosed the new position at a private conference a …

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Facebook is going to explain more about how machine learning decides the ads you see

2023-02-14T13:53:29-05:00

Meta is updating Facebook's ad transparency tools to better explain how it uses machine learning to decide which ads you see you.

Starting Tuesday, when you tap the "Why am I seeing this ad?" message on an ad, you'll see the following information, according to a blog post from Meta's Pedro Pavón:

Information summarized into topics about how your activity both on and off our technologies - such as liking a post on a friend's Facebook page or interacting with your favorite sports website - may inform the machine learning models we use to shape and deliver the ads you see.

New examples and illustrations explaining how our machine learning m …

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Super Bowl LVII was the most-streamed Super Bowl yet

2023-02-14T12:43:17-05:00

The quality of the livestreams still needs some work, though. | Photo by Adam Bow / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

This year's Super Bowl LVII was the most-streamed Super Bowl yet, hitting an average of 7 million streams across the services showing the game. According to data Fox Sports obtained from Adobe Analytics, Super Bowl streams increased 18 percent from last year's 6 million streams - and 103 percent over 2020, which saw just 3.4 million streams.

The 7 million streams included viewers watching the big game on NFL's TV and mobile apps, NFL's website, the NFL Plus streaming service, as well as on Fox's apps and website. This data doesn't account for co-viewing, or when multiple people watch a stream on the same device, and still represents a small …

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EU Parliament votes to effectively ban new combustion engine cars by 2035

2023-02-14T12:02:55-05:00

An electric car being charged at a motorway service station. | Image: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

The European Parliament has given its formal approval to new vehicle emissions standards that would effectively ban the widespread sale of combustion engine cars and vans in the 27-country bloc by 2035, the organization announced today. Three hundred forty members voted in favor of the rules, versus 279 against, and 21 abstained. An initial agreement on the new rules was reached last October, which calls for all cars and vans sold in the EU to emit zero CO2 emissions by the middle of next decade.

The rules still have a couple more stages to go through before becoming law. They need to be formally endorsed by the Council of the EU and be pub …

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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is your brain on Kangs

2023-02-14T12:00:00-05:00

Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. | Image: Marvel Studios

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, from director Peyton Reed, wants to make you laugh. But it also wants you to think it's cool - kind of like a dad who doesn't know how to relate to you now that you're both adults who can recognize that he's always sorta only had maybe one or two good bits. Quantumania knows those bits have worked in the past, and it gamely whips them out as part of the Ant-Man series' most visually imaginative stories yet. But rather than coasting on its sense of dad-focused humor, Quantumania tries to switch things up a bit by mainlining a few doses of whatever psychedelics Doctor Strange has been brewing and inviting you …

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Google launches first Android beta for ad-tracking overhaul

2023-02-14T12:00:00-05:00

Eligible device owners can opt themselves in or out of the Privacy Sandbox on Android beta at any time in the settings menu. | Image: Google

Around this time last year, Google revealed it was working on a multiyear initiative to improve privacy and remodel ad tracking on Android phones, bringing the mobile platform in line with Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature for iOS. Following the release of an early developer preview last April, Google says the first beta for Privacy Sandbox on Android will start rolling out tomorrow to a limited number of Android 13 devices, allowing users and developers to test the new technology in the real world. Access to the beta will expand "over time," and devices selected to participate will receive an Android notification informing users of …

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Discord Stage Channels adds Twitch-like video and screen sharing

2023-02-14T12:00:00-05:00

Discord’s new video livestreaming features allows smaller content creators to broadcast and screen share directly to their community Discord servers. | Image: Discord

Discord is already a beloved communications platform for YouTube and Twitch's livestreaming communities, but now the company is taking its own first significant step into the livestreaming industry. Announced today, Discord has updated its Stage Channels feature to support video, screen sharing, and a text chat for viewers to interact with hosts and each other. The update is available now and is supported across all Discord desktop and mobile applications.

Stage Channels were first introduced as a live audio feature in March 2021, enabling users to broadcast conversations between designated speakers and moderators to a room of virtual liste …

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