Engadget Podcast: The crypto crash explained

What the heck is going on in the land of cryptocurrency and NFTs? This week, Devindra and Engadget UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith chat with Manda Farough, co-host and producer of the Virtual Economy podcast, about the massive crypto crash. They discuss how the fall of the Luna cryptocurrency and its sibling, TerraUSD, sent shockwaves through the industry. 

Also, they dive into ICE’s surprisingly robust (and scary) surveillance system, as well the DHS’s stalled misinformation board. Stay tuned for the end of the show for our chat with Tim Miller and Jennifer Yuh Nelson, the co-creator and animation director for Netflix’s Love, Death & Robots.

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

  • Terra, Luna, and the recent Crypto crash – 2:05

  • Acer’s glasses-free 3D laptop – 26:35 

  • Report outs U.S.’s ICE as breeching data privacy, has facial recognition data on Americans – 33:37

  • Homeland Security “pauses” disinformation board – 43:15

  • There is once again a rumor about USB-C on iPhone – 46:41

  • Working on – 52:44

  • Pop culture picks – 59:35

  • Interview with Love, Death & Robots co-creator Time Miller and animation director Jennifer Yuh Nelson – 1:06:51

Credits
Hosts: Devindra Hardawar and Mat Smith
Guest: Manda Farough
Producer: Ben Ellman
Music: Dale North and Terrence O’Brien

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 delivers faster, longer-lasting Android flagships

Qualcomm is keeping up its habit of releasing speed-bumped chips in the middle of the year, albeit with a couple of twists. The company has introduced a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 system-on-chip that delivers both the usual performance boost and, importantly, battery life. Qualcomm claims a 10 percent processing speed increase and 20 percent higher performance-per-Watt for AI, but it’s also boasting a 30 percent power reduction — in theory, you’ll wring an extra hour of gameplay out of your flagship-class Android handset.

There won’t be a shortage of device partners. Qualcomm expects products to begin arriving in the third quarter (summer) from big-name brands like ASUS, Honor, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo and Xiaomi. These are more likely to be subtle revisions than major overhauls, but that still means you’ll be getting top-of-the-line processing power.

A second announcement is more of a pleasant surprise for budget buyers. Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, a sequel to the 778G aimed at upper-mid-range Android hardware. An upgraded Adreno GPU should be about 20 percent faster, while AI processing is about 30 percent quicker. There are a few firsts for the 7 series, too. You can shoot simultaneously from three cameras, take advantage of on-chip data security upgrades and share in the audio upgrades from the 8 Gen 1.

The first Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 phones are due by the end of the second quarter (no later than June) from brands like Honor, Oppo and Xiaomi. You might not see many of these products in the US, then. Still, they could make a big difference in a category where price is often as important as features and gaming frame rates.

Qualcomm’s new reference AR glasses are wireless and more comfortable

Qualcomm’s smart glasses technology has come along way in two years. The company has unveiled the Wireless AR Smart Viewer Reference Design, a next-gen pair of augmented reality glasses meant to help hardware partners build their own immersive eyewear. It now tethers wirelessly to a host PC, phone or puck, and it’s 40 percent thinner despite packing a newer (if slightly old) Snapdragon XR2 platform. Add better-balanced weight distribution and the device should be considerably more comfortable than its predecessor, even if it still won’t win any fashion awards.

Each eye gets a 1080p, 90Hz micro-OLED display that reportedly eliminates motion blur. You’ll also have full six-degrees-of-freedom movement thanks to three cameras (two monochrome, one color) as well as hand tracking with gesture recognition. WiFi 6E and Bluetooth help shuffle data quickly while keeping lag under 3ms between the glasses and host device.

A handful of manufacturers already have access to Qualcomm’s new AR design, and more should have their turn within the “coming months.” You won’t buy this exact hardware as an everyday customer. It could, however, lead to a wave of next-generation glasses that you wouldn’t mind wearing for games or work — even they might not be as ambitious as some AR projects.

Pokémon Go’s Remote Raid Passes will no longer appear in cheap weekly bundles

If you want to continue raiding remotely on Pokémon Go, you’ll have to get used to paying full price for passes. Niantic has announced that going forward, it’s no longer selling them as part of its weekly one Pokécoin bundle like it’s been doing the past couple of years. The company introduced its cheap weekly bundle offering in the early days of the pandemic when COVID restrictions prohibited people from going out. Shortly after that, it launched Remote Raid Passes, allowing people to play shared raids in their area without having to leave their homes and having to congregate in groups. 

Niantic used to regularly include Remote Raid Passes in its one Pokécoin bundles, but now it’ll cost you 100 Pokécoins for a single pass. To earn coins, you’ll have to take down or defend a gym, or to pay real money for them. Pokémon Go live game director Michael Steranka told Polygon that the company is hoping to “shift the balance back towards the fun of raiding together in-person again.” Niantic has even increased the rewards for in-person raids in an effort to entice you to go out with your friends and play the game like you used to. 

In addition, the company has revealed that it’s adding new social features to the game in the coming months. Niantic has been testing community features on a standalone application for Ingress players over the past few months, allowing them to communicate with each other for raids and other purposes and to find communities in-app. The developer is expected to reveal more details about the capability’s arrival on Pokémon Go at its Lightship conference next week.

Canada joins Five Eyes allies in banning Huawei and ZTE 5G telecom gear

Canada is banning 4G and 5G telecom equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, joining its “Five Eyes” allies in doing so. The decision follows a three-year review that was delayed by political tensions with China after Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on a US warrant. 

“Our government will always protect the safety and security of Canadians and will take any actions necessary to safeguard our critical telecommunications infrastructure,” said Canada’s innovation minister, François-Philippe Champagne, in a press release.

“We’re disappointed but not surprised. We’re surprised it took the government so long to make a decision,” Huawei spokesperson Alykhan Velshi told The Guardian. “We see this as a political decision, one born of political pressure primarily from the United States.”

Two of Canada’s largest wireless providers, Bell and Telus, switched to Ericsson and Nokia equipment in 2020 to build their next-generation 5G networks. However, both operators have some Huawei 5G equipment in place as part of so-called non-standalone 5G networks integrated with previous 4G networks. Those 4G networks were also built using Huawei equipment. Huawei has sold over $700 million in equipment to Canadian operators since 2018, mostly to Bell and Telus. 

Both operators reportedly approached the federal government in the past to ask about compensation from taxpayers for potential removal Huawei or ZTE gear. The CEO of a smaller Northern operator, Iristel, previously said that a requirement to remove existing equipment would be “catastrophic.” 

However, Champagne said that operators will be required to remove any Huawei or ZTE gear at their own expense. Existing 5G equipment must be removed or terminated by June 28, 2024 and any 4G equipment by December 31, 2027, according to the policy statement.

Canada’s Five Eyes intelligence allies, the US, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, have already banned Huawei and ZTE wireless equipment. Canada has faced growing pressure to do the same, over fears it could compromise the security of all five nations, given that China’s laws require state companies to cooperate with intelligence services. 

Microsoft reportedly censors searches for politically sensitive Chinese personalities

You may find it hard to search for people considered politically sensitive in China if you’re using Bing — even if you’re in the United States. The Citizen Lab, a research lab based at the University of Toronton’s Munk School, has analyzed Bing’s autosuggestion system and found that names of Chinese party leaders and dissidents don’t automatically show up like they usually would when you start typing. They’re apparently the second largest category of names censored by autosuggest, next to names related to pornography and eroticism.

The lab found that the censorship applies to names typed in Chinese characters and in English letters. Plus, it affects not just Bing, but also the Windows Start menu search and DuckDuckGo, which uses Bing’s autosuggestion system. Perhaps more importantly, it applies to various regions in the world, including China, the US and Canada. Some of the most prominent examples of names Microsoft won’t autocomplete are President Xi Jinping, human rights activist Liu Xiaobo and the Tank Man, which is the nickname for the unidentified Chinese man who famously stood in front of the tanks leaving Tiananmen Square.

Last year, Microsoft caught flak after reports came out that it blocked searches for Tank Man in countries that include the US, France and Singapore. Microsoft attributed it to an “accidental human error” when it addressed the issue. Citizen Lab’s senior research associate Jeffrey Knockel called censorship rules bleeding from one part of the world into another a “danger” when internet platforms have users around the world, The Wall Street Journal reports. He added: “If Microsoft had never engaged in Chinese censorship operations in the first place, there would be no way for them to spill into other regions.”

Disney+ is working on a ‘Daredevil’ series

Daredevil fans who were disappointed when Netflix axed the popular show after three seasons now have something to look forward to. Disney+ is moving forward with its own series about the blind lawyer-turned-superhero Matt Murdock, reportedVariety. The streaming service has signed co-writers Matt Corman and Chris Ord to write and executive produce the series. Corman and Ord served as co-showrunners for the NBC military drama The Brave, and the duo also created the spy drama Covert Affairs.

Daredevil is only the latest of a large number of MCU titles that have been revived on Disney+ as shows, starting with last year’s WandaVision. The streamer has since released six other Marvel shows, including Hawkeye, Moonknight and Loki, with many more to follow this year. Meanwhile, the raft of Netflix shows based on Marvel characters all left the streaming platform’s library for good earlier this year.

The Daredevil Disney+ show is still in the very early stages — Variety notes that Marvel has yet to announce anything formally. Charlie Cox, who played the lead character in the Netflix series, returned to his old role in this year’s Spider-Man:No Way Home and Vincent D’Onofrio reprised his Daredevil role of Kingpin in Disney’s Hawkeye. Both actors seemed optimistic about a Disney+ revival of the series, but there’s no telling if they’ll return to the new series.

In an interview with Marvel News Desk, D’Onofrio shed some light on the Netflix show’s sudden cancellation, which shocked its many fans. The actor said the show’s departure in 2018 likely had to do with Marvel paving the way for Disney’s nascent streaming service. “You know, at the same time the group #SaveDaredevil started to rise, we started to learn the reasons why that happened and so we understood what Marvel was doing because Disney+ coming out.”

Facebook is still struggling to remove videos of the Buffalo mass shooting

Facebook is still struggling to contain the video of last weekend’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. Now, not only are clips of the shooting accessible on the platform, reposted clips of the attack are sometimes appearing alongside Facebook…