Hasta La Gadget!

WhatsApp is introducing some arguably overdue messaging and calling features, including one that could reduce the spread of misinformation. To begin with, WhatsApp is adding reaction emoji to help people share thoughts without cluttering chats. You’ll also find support for larger 32-person voice calls, and you’ll get to share files up to 2GB to help collaborate on projects.

More importantly, group administrators will have the power to delete messages. While this could help with simple tasks like cleaning up accidental messages or the occasional insult, it could be particularly useful for limiting misinformation in regions where bogus claims are sometimes propagated through group chats. This will depend on attentive and willing admins, of course.

The promised features are due in the “coming weeks” and arrive alongside Communities upgrades that include announcement messages. These are catch-up features in some respects, but they could easily be appreciated if you thrive on WhatsApp and are reluctant to switch for some must-have functionality.

The hackers behind the March 23 theft of roughly $625 million worth of cryptocurrency from the Ronin blockchain are based in North Korea, according to a new announcement from the FBI. The federal law enforcement agency claims the Lazarus Group, North Korea’s most notorious hacker gang, is laundering the money for Kim…

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DC Attorney General Karl Racine has filed a motion (PDF) asking the court to reconsider its decision to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit he filed against Amazon in 2021. In the original lawsuit, Racine accused the e-commerce giant of “illegally abusing and maintaining its monopoly power by controlling prices across the online retail market.” Third-party sellers that use Amazon’s Marketplace have to abide by the company’s agreement, which includes a fair pricing policy. If they sell their goods for lower prices elsewhere, Amazon could remove their items’ buy box, suspend their shipment option and even terminate their selling privileges for “serious or repeated cases.”

The company stopped telling sellers back in 2019 in the midst of antitrust scrutiny that they couldn’t sell their products for cheaper prices elsewhere. However, the company later added back a clause under its fair pricing policy that’s nearly identical. Racine argued that since sellers price their goods with Amazon’s cut in mind, the policy artificially raises prices even on sellers’ own websites and on competing e-commerce platforms. 

Amazon told us when Racine first filed the lawsuit that the Attorney General had it “exactly backwards.” The spokesperson said: “Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively. The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law.” The Superior Court of the District of Columbia sided with Amazon and threw out Racine’s complaint back in March. 

Now, the DC AG wants another chance at proving that Amazon violated antitrust laws. His office’s amended complaint includes additional details about how the company’s policy violates DC code, mostly focusing on how it “causes prices to District residents to be higher than they otherwise would be” and how it inhibits sellers from competing with Amazon’s own products. 

Racine said in a statement about the motion he filed:

“We’re asking the court to reconsider its decision to dismiss our Amazon case because the antitrust laws and facts are on our side and we are determined to continue standing up for DC consumers. Amazon illegally uses its market power to prevent sellers from lowering their prices on other platforms — including their own. This results in higher prices for DC consumers.”

WhatsApp will start experimenting with Communities, an update that represents a “major evolution” for the messaging app, according to Mark Zuckerberg. An unreleased version of the feature was first spotted last year, but the company hadn’t confirmed its existence until now.

Communities will allow people to combine separate group chats “under one umbrella with a structure that works for them,” WhatsApp wrote in a blog post. “That way people can receive updates sent to the entire Community and easily organize smaller discussion groups on what matters to them.”

The company hasn’t shared details around exactly how these groups will be formed, but a spokesperson said the idea is to give “close-knit groups” more ways to communicate beyond the chat features currently offered by WhatsApp. The company will start testing the feature later this year in “select countries,” but will eventually make it available globally.

In a post on Facebook, Zuckerberg said that Communities would be a major shift for WhatsApp and Meta, one that emphasizes “feeds” and traditional social networking features less than “community messaging.”

“In the same way that social feeds took the basic technology behind the internet and made it so anyone could find people and content online, I think community messaging will take the basic protocols behind one-to-one messaging and extend them so you can communicate more easily with groups of people to get things done together,” he wrote. He added that Meta was working on similar features for Messenger, WhatsApp and Facebook as well.

It’s also a playbook Meta has used in the past. In 2017, Zuckerberg tried to reorient Facebook around Groups and “meaningful communities.” The company started building new feature for Groups and encouraging users to join as part of its new mission to “bring the world closer together.” Zuckerberg seems to be following the same strategy now with WhatsApp, which is far more popular than Facebook in much of the world. 

Making WhatsApp more like Groups on Facebook also comes with some risks, though.Facebook’s earlier pivot to Groups may have resulted in increased polarization on the platform, and Groups have also been pegged as major sources of misinformation on the platform. And WhatsApp, which due to its encryption lacks many of the moderation tools available to Facebook, has already struggled with misinformation and other problematic content. Making it even easier to connect disparate group threads into one place could potentially exacerbate these issues.

A spokesperson said the company is “building a number of updates” focused on safety, and pointed to new controls that allow admins to delete messages and existing limits on message forwarding.

Korg arguably kickstarted something of a synth revolution when it launched the Volca line. And the Volca FM has been a consistent favorite in the series. (It was also the first “real” synth I ever got, so I have something of a soft spot for it.) Now, some six year later, the company is issuing an updated model, the Volca FM 2. Like the Volca Sample 2 it released in 2020, this is a mostly incremental improvement on the previous model, but it does address some pain points. 

Let’s start with what hasn’t changed — the core six operator, 32 algorithm synth engine. The Volca FM remains an unabashedly traditional take on the Yamaha DX7. The form factor is also unchanged, and you can still power it with six AA batteries. You also still get the same 16-step sequencer with “motion sequencing”.

Physically the changes are subtle. The display is now blue eight-segment LEDs instead of red. The five-pin MIDI DIN has been replaced with a TRS MIDI jack, but that has also made room for MIDI out, incase you want to control other gear with the Volca’s sequencer.

The big changes though, are under the hood. For one the the Volca FM 2 is a six voice synth, instead of a three voice one. That’s a huge change and allows you to play bigger, richer chords. And it now responds to velocity over MIDI, something you basically needed a hack to get before. There’s also a reverb effect built-in, in addition to the chorus. A little reverb goes a long way when you’re dealing with a synth, especially a digital one. So this is another very welcome upgrade.

Lastly Korg has added a randomization feature. This allows you to quickly create new and unique sounds, without having to master the arcane art of FM synthesis. 

The Volca FM 2 is available to preorder today for $170.