Hasta La Gadget!

Surprise! The iPhone 14 is pretty repairable, it turns out. This week, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with Engadget’s Sam Rutherford about this move towards greater repairability and what it means for future iPhones. Also, they dive into NVIDIA’s powerful (and expensive!) new RTX 4080 and 4090 GPUs. Sure, they’re faster than before, but does anyone really need all that power?

Listen above, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you’ve got suggestions or topics you’d like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!

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Topics

• The iPhone 14 is surprisingly repairable – 1:17

• NVIDIA announces RTX 4090 and 4080 GPUs (and a Portal mod with ray tracing) – 21:08

• Huge hack at Rockstar leaks GTA 6 videos and dev code – 34:22

• Uber was also hacked last week by the same crew that hit Rockstar – 38:37

• Windows 11 2022 Update – 40:21

• Google is offering a $30 1080p HDR Chrome cast with Google TV – 44:05

• Does anyone need the Logitech G cloud gaming handset? – 46:59

• Twitch is banning gambling streams on October 18 – 51:56

• Working on – 55:34

• Pop culture picks – 1:01:35

Livestream

Credits
Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar
Guest: Sam Rutherford
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien
Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos
Graphic artists: Luke Brooks and Brian Oh

Read more…

You now have a way to show your disapproval of hurtful (or simply pointless) TikTok comments. In the wake of a test this spring, TikTok has started the global rollout for a comment ‘dislike’ button. As with other social networks, you can tap a thumbs-down button to express your displeasure, or undo the action if you’ve had second thoughts.

The company bills the feature as another way to get feedback regarding “irrelevant or inappropriate” comments. Ideally, a comment with a large volume of dislikes will warn TikTok about hate speech, spam or trolling that it might otherwise miss. That, in turn, could promote healthier comment sections.

Before you ask: yes, TikTok is aware of the potential for abuse. Like YouTube, TikTok won’t show dislike counts. A mob might have less incentive to downvote comments it disagrees with. TikTok hasn’t said if it will crack down against misuses of the button, but we’ve asked the company for clarification.

This isn’t the only moderation tool at TikTok’s disposal, and the combined resources could help the company get a handle on comment sections that all too frequently go downhill. With that in mind, it’s not clear how effective the dislike button might be given TikTok’s challenges with enforcing its policies. TikTok still has problems controlling misinformation, for instance. Dislikes might help, but they don’t represent a surefire fix.

NVIDIA is looking to take the sting out of creating virtual 3D worlds with a new artificial intelligence model. GET3D can generate characters, buildings, vehicles and other types of 3D objects, NVIDIA says. The model should be able to whip up shapes quickly too. The company notes that GET3D can generate around 20 objects per second using a single GPU.

Researchers trained the model using synthetic 2D images of 3D shapes taken from multiple angles. NVIDIA says it took just two days to feed around 1 million images into GET3D using A100 Tensor Core GPUs.

The model can create objects with “high-fidelity textures and complex geometric details,” NVIDIA’s Isha Salian wrote in a blog post. The shapes GET3D makes “are in the form of a triangle mesh, like a papier-mâché model, covered with a textured material,” Salian added.

Users should be able to swiftly import the objects into game engines, 3D modelers and film renderers for editing, as GET3D will create them in compatible formats. That means it could be much easier for developers to create dense virtual worlds for games and the metaverse. NVIDIA cited robotics and architecture as other use cases.

The company said that, based on a training dataset of car images, GET3D was able to generate sedans, trucks, race cars and vans. It can also churn out foxes, rhinos, horses and bears after being trained on animal images. As you might expect, NVIDIA notes that the larger and more diverse the training set that’s fed into GET3D, “the more varied and detailed the output.”

With the help of another NVIDIA AI tool, StyleGAN-NADA, it’s possible to apply various styles to an object with text-based prompts. You might apply a burned-out look to a car, convert a model of a home into a haunted house or, as a video showing off the tech suggests, apply tiger stripes to any animal.

The NVIDIA Research team that created GET3D believes future versions could be trained on real-world images instead of synthetic data. It may also be possible to train the model on various types of 3D shapes at once, rather than having to focus on one object category at a given time.

Google has unveiled another streaming dongle. The Chromecast with Google TV (HD) device manages to offer a lot of the features from the $50 4K model at a significantly cheaper $30 price. Unlike the older $35 Chromecast, it comes with a remote control that eliminates the need for a smartphone, though you can still control it with your phone. There is a drawback – that lower 1080p resolution – but there’s HDR support. It also comes with six months of Peacock Premium, free.

The lack of a remote controller was a frustration for many people looking for a plug-and-stream stick, and at this price, it’s a pretty tempting streaming solution if you haven’t already picked up a Chromecast, Roku or something else.

– Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Tesla to recall more than a million vehicles over ‘pinchy’ windows

• Moog once again revives the Model 10, its first compact modular synth

• Meta ordered to pay $175 million in patent infringement case

• Nothing reveals the charging case for its next earbuds

• The best smartphones you can buy right now

• NASA and Hideo Kojima team up for a Ludens-inspired watch

• Yale’s redesigned door lock will be one of the first Matter-compatible smart home devices

• ByteDance’s Pico reveals its latest VR headset as it aims to compete with Meta Quest 2

Apple’s 2nd-gen AirPods Pro review

Big improvements, all on the inside.

Engadget

Yes, they still have stems. Yes, there’s still active noise cancellation. Yes, they might be worth upgrading from the original AirPods Pro. Apple has included of the conveniences from the 2019 model, alongside additions like Adaptive Transparency, Personalized Spatial Audio and a new touch gesture in tow. There’s room to further refine the familiar formula, so read on for the full review.

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This $799 turntable can connect to any Sonos speaker

If you love vinyl and streaming music, the Stream Carbon might be for you.

Victrola

A lot of connected smart speakers don’t work with turntables, which can make things complicated during the continued resurgence of vinyl. Victrola, which has made record players for more than 100 years, is mostly known for entry-level turntables with built-in speakers, but it’s now revealed the Stream Carbon, a $799 turntable that can directly connect to a Sonos system, which means you’ll be able to stream your records all over your home. Victrola says this is just the first of more planned devices in the Stream lineup.

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The FDA may have unintentionally made ‘NyQuil Chicken’ go viral on TikTok

TikTok says interest spiked only after the FDA’s warning.

You’ve probably heard something about “NyQuil Chicken,” a supposedly viral TikTok “challenge” of cooking chicken in a marinade of cold medicine. Not only disgusting, as the FDA recently reminded the public, it’s just as toxic as it looks. The agency’s bizarrely timed warning may have backfired, making the meme more popular than ever. TikTokconfirmed that on September 14th, the day before the FDA notice, there were only five searches for “NyQuil chicken” in the app. But by September 21st, that number skyrocketed “by more than 1,400 times,” according to BuzzFeed News.

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Instagram is working on ‘nudity protection’ technology

It’s focused on unwanted DMs.

An early screengrab tweeted by researcher Alessandro Paluzzi indicates that Instagram is working on “Nudity protection” technology that “covers photos that may contain nudity in chat,” giving users the option to view them or not. Instagram parent Meta confirmed to The Verge that it’s in development. Meta said the aim is to help shield people from nude images or other unsolicited messages. As further protection, the company said it can’t view the images itself nor share them with third parties.

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Facebook violated Palestinians’ right to free expression, according to Meta

Many users’ accounts were hit with “false strikes” last year due to Meta’s policies.

Meta has released the findings of an outside report that examined how its content moderation policies affected Israelis and Palestinians amid an escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip last May. The report said that Facebook’s approach appears “to have had an adverse human rights impact on the rights of Palestinian users to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, political participation, and non-discrimination, and therefore on the ability of Palestinians to share information and insights about their experiences as they occurred.”

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