Samsung recently announced a Galaxy Unpacked event which we speculate could be for the Galaxy S22’s launch. The company has not mentioned any dates yet, but for those who are pretty much 100% certain that they will be getting the phone, it appears that reservations for the handset are already open.
If you head on over to Samsung’s website, you can actually make a reservation for the phone. Samsung does not explicitly mention the Galaxy S22, but rather they refer to it as the “next Galaxy”. Keep in mind that you’re not actually buying the phone right now, but simply placing your name on a waiting list so that when the phone is live, you’ll be able to guarantee yourself a spot if you don’t want to potentially miss out on the first wave.
Samsung’s website also notes that customers who reserve the phone will also be getting $50 in credit towards other Samsung Galaxy products, so this isn’t really a discount, but more like credit so if you wanted to buy some accessories or earbuds, you can use this $50 credit and save yourself some money.
According to the rumors, the handset is expected to be announced on the 8th or 9th of February, so it shouldn’t be too long until we have all the official details.
Yesterday, we reported that Apple had closed off the loophole for its education discount. Basically, prior to this, Apple customers who wanted to buy a product using the education discount could do so as Apple did not really verify if users are a student or a teacher (or staff of an educational institute).
However, Apple changed this as they implemented a verification system using UniDays that would check your credentials to see if you are really a student or staff member, but now according to reports, it looks like that verification system has disappeared. It is unclear if this rollback is temporary or if Apple has ultimately decided against it.
However, what it means is that if you do wish to take advantage of Apple’s education discount, you can do so while the loophole is open. Do keep in mind that there are some limitations to this discount where users can only order one product per year, presumably to prevent it from being abused by resellers who might take the discount and resell it at full price.
Apple does still rely on UniDays for verification for users who want to take part in the Apple Music discounted student plan, so it’s not as if the company has gotten rid of the system for good.
” data-medium-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/tik2-1080×720.jpg” data-large-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/tik2-1200×800.jpg” />Photo and video sharing platforms like Instagram and TikTok seem to be on a serious revamp mode. Instagram recently announced major changes to its home feed and was also in the news after it began testing a paid subscription model with select creators. The details of the feature called “Instagram Subscriptions” have been shared by the creators of the social … Continue reading
The wait is over. Following a first-look trailer back in June of last year, ViacomCBS has finally released a new clip from Star Trek: Picard. And there’s a lot to unpack here. Through the machinations of Q, Picard and the crew of the La Sirena find themselves in 2024. Setting season two of the series in the near future may seem like lazy writing, but if you’ve seen Deep Space Nine, you know that’s an important year in Star Trek’s in-universe history that the franchise has explored in the past.
In “Past Tense,” a two-episode arc from season three of DS9, a transporter anomaly (what else?) sends Commander Sisko, Dr. Bashir and Jadzia Dax to San Francisco circa the early 21st century. After the police leave him and Bashir in the city’s “Sanctuary District,” a ghetto that houses San Francisco’s poor and sick away from its more well-off citizens, Sisko realizes they’ve arrived on Earth days before the Bell Riots, a moment that’s pivotal to Star Trek’s worldbuilding. And it’s likely that moment Picard references at the start of the trailer. “There are some moments that haunt us all our lives,” he says. “Moments upon which history turns.”
The two episodes that make up “Past Tense” are widely considered some of the best the franchise has to offer, in large part because they directly address economic and racial injustice in American society. It’s hard to say if Picard will have something meaningful to add to that conversation, but it’s clear that’s part of the intent here. At the very least, fans can look forward to a cameo from Whoopi Goldberg’s Guinan.
In the US, season two of Star Trek: Picard will debut on Paramount+ on March 3rd. Amazon Prime Video will carry the series internationally, with the first episode available to stream beginning on March 4th.
Welcome back to Toy Aisle, io9’s regular round up of the latest and greatest in merchandise from across the internet. This week, Bandai’s Gundam Universe figures go beyond the time, Aliens gets an unconventional model kit, and making the perfect Death Star shot might be harder than hitting an exhaust port with an…
“Following the birth, wildlife care specialists noticed that the calf’s condition began to deteriorate, including difficulty standing and not nursing,” the park said Thursday.
” data-medium-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/20220103_XLP_Superblack_9787-1080×720.jpg” data-large-file=”https://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/20220103_XLP_Superblack_9787-1200×800.jpg” />Renowned Mercedes-Benz tuning house Brabus has unleashed its latest creation based on the Mercedes-AMG G63 sport-luxury SUV. It’s the newest variant of the 800 Adventure XLP Superblack, a go-anywhere pickup truck hiding a mighty powerful V8 engine under the hood. With a vehicle like this, it’s all about the numbers. The Mercedes-AMG G63 has an already-potent 4.0-liter bi-turbo V8 pumping … Continue reading
In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Crisis Text Line can be reached by texting HOME to 741741 (US), 686868 (Canada), or 85258 (UK). Wikipedia maintains a list of crisis lines for people outside of those countries.
A Connecticut mother has brought a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, as well as Snap, claiming the platforms to cause the sort of addiction her late daughter suffered prior to taking her own life at age 11 last July.
Social media companies have been the target of various lawsuits over the years related to alleged harm to minors — oftentimes for failing to adequately prevent that harm, as in the case of teen who was bullied via an anonymous messaging app within Snapchat, leading to his eventual suicide. Tammy Rodriguez is instead making the case that the sort of “stickiness” these platforms are built to engender is inherently harmful, especially to young users like her late daughter Selena.
Selena “struggled for more than two years with an extreme addiction to Instagram and Snapchat,” the suit notes, a claim apparently backed by an outpatient therapist who had “never seen a patient as addicted to social media” during their evaluation. Although technically too young to be on either platform per their terms of service — Instagram and Snapchat state their minimum age for account creation is 13 — the mother points to the absence of parental controls, as well as the lack of strong age verification checks, which made policing her daughter’s access to the services nearly impossible. “The only way for Tammy Rodriguez to effectively limit access to Defendants’ products would be to physically confiscate Selena’s internet-enabled devices,” the suit claims, “which simply caused Selena to run away in order to access her social media accounts on other devices.”
Use of the services, Rodriguez alleges, caused her daughter to suffer from depression, sleep deprivation, school absences, eating disorders, self-harm and led to her eventual suicide.
Rodriguez argues that Snapchat’s “unknown and changing rewards” are “akin to a slot machine but marketed toward teenage users who are even more susceptible than gambling addicts.” Similarly, Instagram’s design decisions “seek to exploit users’ susceptibility to persuasive design and unlimited accumulation of unpredictable and uncertain rewards,” in the form of likes and followers. These features, it’s argued, are highly detrimental to teen and pre-teen users whose brains are still not fully developed, particularly in the realms of “impulse control and risk evaluation.”
The claim mirrors, as well as quotes from, some of the concerns voiced by whistleblower Francis Haugen. Among the tranche of documents released to news organizations by Haugen was internal research showing that Instagram might be harmful to the well-being of users, especially young girls, as well as internal documents describing the loss of of this user cohort as an “existential threat” to the business. The effects of Instagram on children’s well-being is also the subject of a current investigation by a bipartisan coalition of Attorneys General.
We’ve reached out to Snap and Meta for comment and will update if we hear back.
Update 1/21/22 5:17pm ET: “We are devastated to hear of Selena’s passing and our hearts go out to her family,” a Snap spokesperson told Engadget. “While we can’t comment on the specifics of active litigation, nothing is more important to us than the wellbeing of our community.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of a sanitized, hypercapitalist metaverse will likely never be as compelling or idiosyncratic as VRChat, the virtual reality community that’s been home to anime fans, Furries and a slew of other sub-cultures since 2014. That’s my main takeaway from We Met in Virtual Reality, the first documentary filmed entirely in VRChat, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival today.
There’s no chance Zuck’s metaverse would let people wear trademarked avatars without paying a ton, attend exotic clubs to receive (or give) virtual lapdances, or allow users to build whatever the hell they want. VRChat, as portrayed by director Joe Hunting, is basically a proto-metaverse where anything is possible. And for many, it has served as a crucial social hub during the pandemic, a place where they can forget about the world, relax with friends and maybe find love.
But of course, that’s been the nature of practically every online community. We’re social animals — people have always been able to connect with each other over BBS, IRC, Usenet and the plethora of forums and chat services that populated the early internet. I spent most of the ’90s hanging out in anime and gaming chat rooms, the sorts of places that today’s connected youth would probably find quaint. Still, the people I met there helped me survive the worst parts of middle and high school. Those relationships, and the internet itself, shaped me into who I am (for better or worse).
We Met in Virtual Reality proves that the unbridled, experimental sense of online community is still alive and well today, despite relentless consolidation from Big Tech. But now, instead of staring at tiny CRT monitors, people are slapping on VR headsets to explore fully realized environments. Hardcore VRChat users are also investing in powerful computing rigs as well as upgrades like finger and whole-body tracking. In the ’90s, I was grateful to get another 16MB of RAM so that I could have more than one browser window open. Today, VRChat devotees can communicate using American Sign Language, or have their anime avatars show off their belly dancing skills.
Hunting approaches his subjects with the eye of an anthropologist, without any judgment towards their sometimes ridiculous avatars (do all the anime ladies need to have jiggly, Dead or Alive-level boob physics?). We Met in Virtual Reality begins as a chill hangout flick — we follow a group of friends as they have virtual drinks and go on joyrides in crudely-built VR cars — but it quickly moves beyond the novelty of its setting. One person credits their VRChat girlfriend for helping them to “unmute” after being silent for two years. An exotic performer explains that being able to dance for people in VRChat helped her grieve with a family tragedy and manage a bout of alcoholism.
Joe Hunting
The film chronicles how that exotic dancer, a young woman based in the UK, formed a romantic relationship with another VRChat user in Miami. These sorts of cyber relationships aren’t anything new, but the VR platform allowed them to do much more than trade links and memes over IM. They could exist in a space together, go on dates to new environments every night. I won’t spoil where things end up for the couple, but I can say that it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective outside of VR.
We Met in Virtual Reality effectively conveys why people would gravitate towards VRChat, especially during a pandemic. But it doesn’t fully capture the wonder of exploring these environments yourself. Seeing people hop on a virtual rollercoaster isn’t nearly as thrilling as doing it, where your entire field of vision is covered and you can easily get vertigo. But I don’t blame Hunting too much for that; his job was to boil down the VR experience so people can enjoy it on a 2D screen, and the film is mostly successful in that respect. The film was shot using a virtual camera that could mimic all of the functionality of a typical shooter, from focus points to aperture levels. So even though it’s produced in an alien environment most people aren’t familiar with, it still feels like a traditional documentary.
Hunting has spent the past few years making VR documentaries, starting with a few short films, as well as the series Virtually Speaking. It’s clear from We Met in Virtual Reality that he’s not just dropping into the community for a quick story. Instead, he sees the humanity behind the avatars and virtual connections. These people aren’t just escaping from their lives with VR — their lives are being made richer because of it.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Samsung recently announced a Galaxy Unpacked event which we speculate could be for the Galaxy S22’s launch. The company has not mentioned any dates yet, but for those who are pretty much 100% certain that they will be getting the phone, it appears that reservations for the handset are already open.
Yesterday, we reported that Apple had closed off the loophole for its education discount. Basically, prior to this, Apple customers who wanted to buy a product using the education discount could do so as Apple did not really verify if users are a student or a teacher (or staff of an educational institute).
