Globally, we throw out 50 million tons of electronics waste every year, which is the equivalent of 1,000 laptops every second. This month the EU addressed this problem with a comprehensive "right to repair" law to dramatically reduce this waste. Let's explore electrical hardware sustainability issues this week, and look at a laptop that seems to anticipate these new e-waste regulations.
Investors have $20 billion to acquire businesses. Is yours one of them?
Our Technology M&A: 2021 Outlook gives owners, founders and entrepreneurs insight into why e-commerce is dominating technology acquisitions, what this means for multiples, when investors are looking to allocate capital and more.
As the CRM solution set continues to grow, it's likely that training systems will be increasingly important. That growth has the effect of converging vendor functionality at roughly the same place, making tertiary product attributes like training systems important differentiators. Taking this into account, the next big thing in CRM might not be a customer-facing app -- but one that faces employees.
An increasing number of businesses and even public companies are showing interest in Bitcoin. However, not all chief financial officers of these institutions are convinced to invest in the digital currency as a corporate asset any time soon.
Monitoring and maintaining your data is an ongoing, strategic process. By educating your CRM users -- and making their data entry process as easy as possible -- you can ensure that better-quality data will be entering the system. Here's how you can give your company a true advantage -- and empower everyone who relies on your CRM's data.
Microsoft Confident Exchange Hack Is State-Sponsored Operation
Microsoft has reported that multiple malicious actors were taking advantage of vulnerabilities in its Exchange software recently to attack systems at organizations that have failed to patch the flaws. The company attributed the attacks "with high confidence" to Hafnium, a group believed to be state-sponsored and operating out of China.
Creating an Immersive, Tailored Media Experience Through RDK-V
For multichannel video programming distributors to stay competitive, they need to offer multichannel video programming solutions that are not only innovative but user friendly. Smart TV manufacturers need to reduce time to market and provide flexible services. Each can bridge the gap by leveraging RDK-V.
Nostalgia website MyHeritage has launched a new service that allows you to create lifelike animations of faces in still photos. The AI-powered service called Deep Nostalgia is free to try.
Shifting Shopping Trends Push Retailers to Rethink Marketing
Shopping trends are expanding as the pandemic's effect on e-commerce continues, forcing retailers to adapt their marketing strategies to meet new consumer expectations and demands.
Two CRM vendors made news recently. Zoho had an analyst conference that reminded us that many businesses don't benefit enough from verticalized suites; and Microsoft introduced several vertical industry systems, including one for nonprofits.
GeckoLinux Does OpenSuse Better | LinuxInsider Review
GeckoLinux is a unique distribution that goes a long way towards unifying the often-confusing array of workstation choices available to business and mainstream consumers looking for an alternative to other computing platforms.
At Digital River we believe in using our global expertise to fuel and optimize commerce, open doors to new markets and facilitate payments around the world. Build an ecommerce solution customized for your business.
Pursue lucrative and in-demand roles with Utica College's 100% online cybersecurity degree. You’ll choose from four specializations to tailor your degree to your career goals.
Create a road map to a truly cognitive contact center. Ensure AI investments achieve the dual goals of automation and customer satisfaction. Empower agents with AI-enabled tools that enhance CX. Coach, train and develop new agents wherever they work.
Women in Tech: 20 Trailblazers Share Their Journeys
Successful women in the tech trenches share their insights and tackle subjects ranging from how to search out a strong mentor to how to be one -- from how to advance in a large company to how to start your own firm.
This book is an excellent guide for students considering STEM courses, graduates pondering job choices, and career changers at any stage in life. It's also a useful tool for school and career counselors, recruiters, and HR pros eager to diversify their workplaces.
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The world of deepfakes is both wonderful and worrying. Apps like Reface can do most of the hard work for you, swapping your face with whatever's big in pop culture and creating low-fi but functional video clips or gifs. At the other end, you have high-level deepfakes that combine an impersonator with a digital-effects artist for the best clips of Tom Cruise that aren't Tom Cruise. Or, far more seriously, people can make world leaders seem to say things that they didn't, creating fake news fallout.
Somewhere in the middle, there are people already using them for nefarious means and personal gain. In a bid to kick rivals off her daughter's cheerleading squad, a woman in Pennsylvania sent coaches AI-altered photos and videos of some teens, showing them drinking, smoking or naked. She was arrested, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Last year, social networks like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter announced they have banned deepfakes in an attempt to reduce their spread. However, the aforementioned faux Cruise blew up on TikTok before it was taken down.
Facebook is launching a tool that will show "when and where you can get vaccinated" for COVID-19 and even provide a link to help you make an appointment. The aim is "to help bring 50 million people a step closer to getting COVID-19 vaccines," according to a post from CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook partnered with Boston Children's Hospital, which runs the VaccineFinder.org website, to make the tool. It'll be available in the COVID-19 Information Center starting today and will offer the hours of operation, contact info and links to make an appointment. It will be supported in 71 different languages and may even show up inside Instagram. Continue reading.
The Brazilian sports superstar should arrive March 16th.
Getty
Fortnite and soccer (aka football) are no strangers to each other, and Epic Games has just teased that Brazilian sports star Neymar might make an appearance in Fortnite on March 16th — can't wait to see the match-ups against Ripley. The timing isn't great: Neymar's been sidelined due to injuries for most of the past few months. Fortnite might be Neymar's only competitive appearance for a spell. Continue reading.
German newspaper Der Spiegel reports that Mini will go EV-only by 2030, with its last new combustion engine car arriving in 2025. If accurate, this would make Mini the first BMW badge to drop gas. It's got some work to do. Currently, the Cooper SE (aka Mini Electric) is its only pure EV, with an all-electric version of the Countryman reportedly entering production in 2023. Continue reading.
It's also starting a program to help creators use the audio chat app.
Clubhouse will no longer require access to your phone contacts to invite people to the platform — you only have to add their phone number directly. While that's not as ideal as avoiding phone numbers altogether, it addresses complaints that Clubhouse was asking for unnecessary info. Company chief Paul Davidson has also said you can ask the company to delete any contacts you've already uploaded and that a tool is in the works to let you delete contacts yourself. The audio-only network is also introducing a Creator First accelerator program, which gives producers the resources to bring their projects to fruition. It's starting very small, though. Only 20 people will be eligible at first for the initiative. Continue reading.
Your daily newsletter is back, and Apple's expensive smart speaker is going away. Late Friday TechCrunch was the first to report that Apple is discontinuing the original HomePod, news that came out after people noticed it going out of stock on the company's website.
In a statement, Apple said it would focus instead on the $99 HomePod mini, which is sad news for all fans of pricey speakers from tech companies. HomePod joining Google's Home Max on the scrap heap is good news for specialists like Sonos, but to me it's just another example of why people are skeptical of investing in these niche devices made by tech companies.
Last year Sonos' 'recycle-mode' effort tried to push users away from devices that were as much as a decade old, and owners still revolted. Apple and Google have promised ongoing support and updates for their speakers, but how long do you really think it will be until these speakers are unplugged from their respective ecosystems?
Filter options like the 'Critter Cuddler' and 'Basic Breather' help it fit your needs.
It's spring, and for many of us that means one thing: allergies. Nicole Lee tried out the Mila air purifier that takes a different approach from many other high-end options as it focuses on being more customizable. There are seven different pre-configured air filters for people with different concerns, whether they're pets, allergies, smells or something else. It's a pricey option at $360, but worth considering if you're just trying to get through your day without another sneezing attack. Continue reading.
The 12.9-inch Magic Keyboard for iPad is down to its lowest price yet, and you can still grab the 11-inch version for less as well. Nintendo knocked 35 percent off many Mario games this week — the sales last through March 13, so there's still time to save money while adding to your games collection. Plus, the latest smartphones from OnePlus remain hundreds of dollars off.
Here are all the best deals from the week that you can still snag today, and remember to follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for more updates. Continue reading.
This week, Cherlynn and Devindra dive into the wild world of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, with Engadget Senior Editor Dan Cooper. What do they mean for the future of art and commerce? And should you care about them at all? Also, we chat about Microsoft's finalized Bethesda acquisition, as well as Facebook's push to dismiss its latest antitrust charges.
AT&T expects to have up to 150 million HBO and HBO Max subscribers by 2026.
AT&T execs told investors the company plans to roll out an ad-supported version of HBO Max in June. However, if you opt for the ad-supported tier, you won't have access to the movies that Warner Bros. is releasing on HBO Max and in theaters on the same day.
For those, you'll either need to pay for the standard plan (where those movies will initially be available for a month) or wait until they arrive on HBO Max on a permanent basis. Continue reading.
Welcome to Friday morning. As some email subscribers may have noticed, the daily newsletter has been on hiatus for several weeks as we contended with a persistent technical issue. We've now figured out a fix, so we're back to our regularly scheduled newsletter.
Thanks for your patience and if you have any more feedback, you can get in touch with us at themorningafter(at)engadget.com. (And if you're reading this on the site, you can subscribe right here.)
Today's edition includes a smartphone with a 'microscope' camera, Tenet on a Game Boy Advance, an explanation of exactly what NFTs are and how to digitally organize your Mac, as our Spring Cleaning series goes beyond simply cleaning your keyboard. That's where my spring cleaning typically ends.
Proving old devices never really die, some enterprising crafters keep squeezing functionality out of yesteryear's gadgets. That includes a horrifically compressed version of Tenet for Game Boy Advance, and a wildly unnecessary Twitter client for the Handspring Visor.Continue reading.
Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are the cryptocurrency off-shoot that has, all of a sudden, burst into the mainstream. They're essentially a way of tying a certificate of authenticity to a digital file, among other things, like a contract, video clip or even a still image. The possibilities for NFTs are still to be explored, but they're booming right now like Bitcoin did through much of 2020. Yesterday, a digital artwork by Beeple and associated NFT sold at auction for nearly $70 million. For what essentially amounted to a copy of a still image someone could have printed at home for free and a signed receipt.
If you're wondering what exactly all of this means, and what's going on, then Dan Cooper has written a lengthy explainer to get you up to speed on what this is, even if you still have trouble understanding why someone would spend so much money on it. Continue reading.
Oppo's new flagship phone, the Find X3 Pro is entirely focused on photography — the giant sensor array on the back kind of gives that away. The headline feature has to be its "microscope" camera. The 3-megapixel f/3.0 microscopic camera delivers 30x magnification natively and can handle 1080p video recording. As you have to get close — the focal distance is between only 1mm and 3mm — this camera even has a small ring light to illuminate your subject.
The results make for a unique camera phone. It's an Oppo device, so there's also lightning-fast charging with the bundled 65W SuperVOOC charger and speedier wireless charging with compatible docks, which can fully charge your phone in 80 minutes. Given past form, chances are the Find X3 Pro won't head to the US, but the company has announced it'll be available in the UK on April 14th, starting at £1,099, which is around $1,250. Continue reading.
It aims to have a high-capacity pre-production battery by 2023.
GM is elaborating on its next-generation Ultium batteries, which sound like something from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but are not. The company plans to use lithium-metal (Li-metal) technology to boost performance and energy density. Li-metal batteries replace carbon anodes with lithium metal, allowing for lighter and more powerful cells. The challenge with the technology is increased resistance and "dendrite" filaments that tend to form on the anodes, making batteries short-circuit and heat up. "With this next-generation Ultium chemistry, we believe we're on the cusp of a once-in-a-generation improvement in energy density and cost," said GM President Mark Reuss, adding that there was also "still room for improvement". Continue reading.
Once you've dusted the cookie crumbs from your MacBook keyboard, it's time for a digital clean. Associate Editor Igor Bonifacic reveals his fastidious Mac cleaning techniques, encompassing hard-drive organization, keeping your desktop clean going forward and even how to purloin the best organization features from Windows 10 for your Mac. Continue reading.
For years, Netflix has looked the other way on people sharing passwords to their streaming accounts with folks that may not quite meet the definition of a "member of the household." As its streaming audience has grown into the hundreds of millions, allowing easy access has been more important than triple-checking credentials.
But those days may be coming to an end. The company confirmed a test it's running that prompts suspected freeloaders to get their own accounts and then asks to verify their access with a code sent to the registered account holder's phone number or email address. Now that Netflix has hiked its prices for several years in a row, and growth in some countries is slowing, it looks like this is a way to find a few more paying customers. Continue reading.
Nearly every addition is coming to play on Xbox, PC and mobile.
Now the deal is done, Microsoft-owned game publisher Bethesda has announced 20 of its games are xton Xbox Game Pass, starting today. In all, Microsoft is adding 12 new titles, including Fallout 4, Morrowind and The Evil Within, for people to check out. They'll join eight other Bethesda games, like Dishonored 2, Fallout 76 and Doom Eternal, that were already available through the service, making a total of 20 titles. Check the full list of titles here.
The Theragun follows through on its guarantees. The principle selling focuses are that it assists with exercise recuperation by delivering muscle pressure and easing irritation, it speeds up warmup and chill off periods for practice and mitigates torment with such a drug or supplement.
Theragun certainly does those things: In my couple of long periods of involvement in the Liv and G3, I've seen enhancements in regions that competitors and sporting exercisers the same are excited about improving.
Notwithstanding the entirety of that, the Theragun has really caused me rest preferable on additional over one event. I'm horrible at resting: It takes me ages to really nod off and once I at long last do, my rest will in general be light and divided.
Theragun Review
I don't know what the system is behind this, but rather I'm expecting that it has something to do with the connection between arduous exercise, muscle hurts and rest. On most evenings that I utilized a Theragun after an exceptionally extraordinary exercise or when my muscles were especially sore, I nodded off quicker and experienced less evening wake-ups. I likewise felt more refreshed all through the next day and to a lesser degree a requirement for a rest.
