Hasta La Gadget!

The U.S. is the only nation among the G-7 to have faced a threat to its representative democracy in modern times — from its own sitting president.

Oppo has teased its first foldable smartphone nearly three years after it unveiled a prototype device. The Find N looks like a device along the lines of Samsung’s Galaxy Fold lineup, created after “four years of intense R&D and six generations of prototypes,” Oppo said in a press release. The launch is set to take place at Oppo Inno Day on December 15th. 

Oppo didn’t reveal any processor, display or other specs of the Find N, other than showing an image and video. It did promise a “beautiful” device that feels good in the hand, and will be simple to use in both the open and closed positions. It also said that it has solved any screen creasing and durability issues inherent in folding smartphones. 

The company best known for folding smartphones is Samsung, with both the Fold and Flip devices. It took Samsung three generations to work out major kinks in the Fold lineup, but the latest Fold 3 model “still needs work,” we said in our Engadget review. Oppo has played things differently by waiting to release its first model, presumably until it felt it had ironed out any major issues. 

On top of the Find N, Oppo is set to reveal other products, having teased a “cutting-edge” neural processing unit (NPU) and smart glasses. The latter will presumably succeed last year’s Oppo AR Glass 2021, developer-only Wayfarer-type glasses with 0.71-inch OLED panels meant to be connected to Android devices via a USB cable. It teased the new model with a “light vs. light” tagline, so they might be lightweight models aimed consumers, not just developers. We’ll soon find out, as Oppo Inno Day runs from December 14-15.

Italy’s antitrust authority (AGCM) has fined Amazon €1.13 billion ($1.28 billion) for “abuse of dominant position,” the second such penalty it has imposed over the last month. Amazon holds a position of “absolute dominance” in the Italian brokerage services market, “which has allowed it to promote its own logistics service, called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA),” the authority wrote in a (Google translated) press release.

According to the AGCM, companies must use Amazon’s FBA service if they want access to key benefits like the Prime label, which in turn allows them to participate in Black Friday sales and other key events. “Amazon has thus prevented third-party sellers from associating the Prime label with offers not managed with FBA,” it said. 

The authority said access to those functions are “crucial” for seller success. It also noted that third-party sellers using FBA are not subject to the stringent performance requirements. As such, they’re less likely to be suspended from the platform if they fail to meet certain goals. Finally, it noted that sellers who use Amazon’s logistics services are discouraged from offering their products on other online platforms, at least to the same extent they do on Amazon. 

The AGCM said it imposed the steep fine as it considered Amazon’s actions to be “particularly serious” given their duration and the effects they’ve caused. On top of the fine, it has demanded that Amazon grant the privileges enjoyed by FBA sellers to all third-party sellers, provided they respect other rules and laws. It will have to define and publish those standards within a year, and its actions will be enforced by a monitoring trustee.

Last month, Amazon and Apple were fined $228 million in Italy for unfairly restricting Beats sales by limiting them to select retailers. The EU also handed Amazon a record $888 million fine for violating the bloc’s strict GDPR data privacy laws. Other tech giants are also under scrutiny in the EU. Notably, the EU recently opened an antitrust investigation into Apple’s App Store rules, particularly over commissions related to in-app purchases. Engadget has reached out to Amazon for comment. 

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has blasted off with NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) satellite. First announced in 2017, the IXPE is the first satellite capable of measuring the polarization of X-rays that come from cosmic sources, such as black holes and neutron stars. 

The fridge-sized satellite has three telescopes that can track and measure the direction, arrival time, energy, and polarization of light. When data from all those telescopes is combined, NASA can form images that could give us more insight into how mysterious celestial objects — those that emit X-ray — work. For instance, they’re hoping it can give us a more thorough look at the structure of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant with a neutron star rapidly spinning in its center.

By observing black holes, the IXPE will help scientists gain more insight and broaden humanity’s knowledge on the regions of space we still barely know. It could provide clues on why they spin and how they gobble up cosmic materials, though it could also lead to new discoveries. Martin Weisskopf, the mission’s principal investigator, said during a briefing: “IXPE will help us test and refine our current theories of how the universe works. We may even discover more exciting theories about these exotic objects than what we’ve hypothesized.” 

SpaceX used a Falcon 9 rocket from a previous mission for this launch. If all goes well, the rocket’s first stage will land on the company’s drone ship “Just Read the Instructions” after ferrying IXPE to space.

Opening arguments launched the high-profile trial of Kim Potter, who fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop last spring in Minnesota.