Twitter opens public appeals for suspended accounts

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he said he would offer “amnesty” to previously banned and suspended accounts. Since then, he’s restored dozens of controversial high-profile users, including Donald Trump (who has yet to return to the platform), comedian Kathy Griffin, and a number of whitenationalists and members of the far-right.

Now, Twitter is opening a public-facing appeals process, which will allow anyone whose account has previously been suspended to request reinstatement. The company posted a link to an online form accessible to users who are able to log into an account that’s previously been locked or suspended.

Earlier this week, the company indicated a new appeals process would be coming as part of its policy to take “less severe actions” against rule-breaking accounts. “Going forward, we will take less severe actions, such as limiting the reach of policy-violating Tweets or asking you to remove Tweets before you can continue using your account,” the company said. “Account suspension will be reserved for severe or ongoing, repeat violations of our policies.”

Twitter added that appeals would be “evaluated under our new criteria for reinstatement.” But it didn’t elaborate on what that criteria would be, or how long the process might take. The company says it expects to receive a “high volume” of requests and that reinstated requests are expected to “follow our rules.”

Netflix’s ‘Dog and Boy’ anime causes outrage for incorporating AI-generated art

In 2016, Studio Ghibli co-founder and director Hayao Miyazaki, responsible for beloved anime classics like Princess Mononoke and Kiki’s Delivery Service, made headlines around the world for his reaction to an AI animation program. “I would never wish t…

AI-generated ‘Seinfeld’ is just as awful as it sounds

A new Twitch livestream tries to answer the question: What if AI made never-ending Seinfeld? “Nothing, Forever” is an experiment using OpenAI’s GPT-3 natural language model to produce (occasionally coherent) dialog between pixelated counterparts of Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer. Although it’s closer to surreal performance art than the beloved 90s sitcom, it conjures images of a strange, dystopian future where we entertain ourselves with endless content generated by robots.

“Nothing, Forever” immediately hits you with well-known aesthetics. Scene transitions show the exterior of a line of New York City brownstones over the sound of a quirky jazz bassline. It frequently cuts to “Larry” (the Jerry equivalent) performing what AI passes as standup comedy. Scenes inside Larry’s apartment show him chatting with George, Elaine and Kramer’s counterparts about appropriately mundane topics. Their conversations, while mostly unintelligible and lacking structure or narrative, make their inspiration clear.

On the other hand, the stiff and rudimentary character models look like they walked out of a 1980s Sierra adventure game. Their voices are robotic too, and Jerry and George sound less like their real-world counterparts and more like Mr. Van Driessen, the hippie social studies teacher from Beavis & Butthead. Finally, it’s a stretch to say the generated dialog is coherent — much less funny. (If not for its laugh track, you wouldn’t notice the laugh lines.) Generative AI’s current limits are as much on display as the show’s influence.

Still of a pixelated Jerry Seinfeld character doing standup comedy onstage in an AI-generated parody.
Twitch

“Aside from the artwork and the laugh track you’ll hear,” one of the show’s creators posted to Reddit, “everything else is generative, including: dialogue, speech, direction (camera cuts, character focus, shot length, scene length, etc), character movement, and music.” The stream has little human involvement and changes based on viewer feedback from the Twitch stream. “The show can effectively change, and the narrative actually evolves based on the audience,” said Hartle in an interview with Vice. “One of the major factors that we’re thinking about is how do we get people involved in crafting the narrative so it becomes their own.”

That goal may be far away, as any narrative — much less a personalized one — seems beyond its current capabilities. Still, with a sizable budget and several years of technological advancement, it’s easy to imagine someone producing more watchable generative programming, an endless stream of personalized, assembly-line digital media. “Our grounding principle was, can we create a show that can generate entertaining content forever? Because that’s truly where we see the future emerging towards. Our goal with the next iterations or next shows that we release is to actually trade a show that is like Netflix-level quality.”

Amazon is offering $50 or $100 gift cards with Samsung Galaxy S23 pre-orders

Before Samsung Unpacked even wrapped up today, Amazon swooped in with an offer on pre-orders for unlocked units of the new Galaxy S23 Ultra, Plus and base model smartphones — bundling a $100 Amazon gift card with the Ultra and plus and a $50 card with the S23 standard. All three phones will also get a free bump to the larger storage size and the offer is good on all available colors (black, cream, green and lavender). Like Amazon, Samsung is also offering $100 or $50 bonus, but in the form of Samsung credit.  

The S23 Ultra has an MSRP of $1,200 for the 256GB storage capacity and the S23+ starts at $1,000 for the 256GB size. The free storage upgrade bumps both of those models up to 512GB. The base S23 goes for $800 with 128GB, and the upgrade brings that to 256GB. The phones will ship on February 17th and the Amazon gift card will be delivered via mail once the phones ship.

We got a chance to spend some time with the S23 and the S23+ this week. The notable differences between the two versions are screen size, battery capacity and price. Both have vivid and smooth screens, as you’d expect from Samsung’s Galaxy S series, and this year’s versions include software advances for both photo and video capture. 

We also got a chance to check out the S23 Ultra, and, of course, the big news there is the big 200 MP camera lashed to its back. We’ll dive into full reviews on all three phones very soon, but in the meantime, the new S23 Galaxy phones are ready to pre-order as of today, and both Amazon and Samsung will throw in a bonus if you jump in now. 

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Rivian is laying off another six percent of its workforce

Electric vehicle maker Rivian is laying off another six percent of its workforce. The company reduced its headcount by the same proportion of workers back in July. The automaker has around 14,000 employees, according to Reuters, so it will be letting go around 840 people this time.

As with the previous round of layoffs, Rivian says it’s focusing resources on increasing production and becoming a profitable company.”While this doesn’t impact manufacturing jobs in Normal, teams across the company will be losing passionate collaborators — teammates who stretched themselves daily and have given their all to help us execute on our mission,” CEO RJ Scaringe wrote in an email to employees. The company shared a copy of the memo with Engadget.

As part of its push toward profitability, Rivian is attempting to ramp up production of its R1T and R1S vehicles, as well as the delivery vans it’s making for Amazon. It had to slash its production target for 2022 due to supply chain issues. Reuters notes that Rivian fell just short of its goal of making 25,000 vehicles last year.

The company is also working on more affordable R2 electric trucks, which it plans to produce at high-volume, but it doesn’t expect to start shipping them until 2026. Rivian will build that truck at a $5 billion factory it’s constructing in Georgia.

“Continuing to improve our operating efficiency on our path to profitability is a core objective and requires us to concentrate our investments and resources on the highest impact parts of our business,” Scaringe wrote. “The changes we are announcing today reflect this focused roadmap.” 

We’ll get a clearer picture of the state of Rivian’s business when it reports quarterly earnings on February 28th. The company announced its latest layoffs soon after Tesla and Ford cut prices of their EVs, making it more difficult for newer players like Rivian to compete. Earlier this week, EV startup Arrival said it would cut around half of its workforce.

Samsung is making ‘extended reality’ wearable devices

Samsung’s Unpacked event isn’t just focused on the Galaxy S23 and Galaxy Book 3. The company has revealed to The Washington Post that it’s working on “extended reality” (that is, augmented, mixed and virtual reality) wearable devices. While there aren’t many details, the hardware will run a new, Google-designed version of Android designed with wearable displays in mind — this isn’t Meta’s heavily customized take on Android from the Quest line. Qualcomm will provide the chipset.

The “XR” hardware will also entail partnerships with Meta and Microsoft, although Samsung isn’t elaborating further. Rumors have swirled that Microsoft axed HoloLens 3 in favor of this project. In an interview with The Post, mobile president TM Roh says the ecosystem has to be “somewhat ready” before launch. The tech giant wants to avoid the missteps of rivals who debuted comparable hardware without robust support.

Samsung is no stranger to wearable screens. The company leapt into the market with 2015’s Gear VR, which used the smartphone as both the display and computing power. In 2017, the firm jumped into PC-oriented mixed reality headsets with the HMD Odyssey. Samsung largely left the market to rivals like Meta and HTC after 2018, however.

Whether or not the timing is right is another matter. Roh says Samsung has been working on its latest initiative for a while, and it may give the brand a quick counter to a long-rumored Apple headset that might debut this spring. With that said, Meta has been struggling with its metaverse efforts and cut 11,000 jobs to shrink costs last fall. Microsoft, meanwhile, has grappled with problems that include a halt to military HoloLens sales, the departure of the team lead over misconduct claims and reports the company may have scrapped the entire HoloLens unit as part of its recent layoffs. Samsung is reentering the mixed reality space right as some of the category’s biggest players are flailing or bowing out — it’s not certain if the Galaxy maker will fare better.

Samsung Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra vs. the competition: All about those cameras

Samsung has unveiled the Galaxy S23 series, and the formula will seem familiar if you’ve seen the company’s phones from the past few years: one ‘small’ 6.1-inch handset, a larger 6.6-inch version and a range-topping 6.8-inch Ultra that steals the show. They’re all faster and take better photos. The competitive landscape is very different this year, however. The S23 line is competing against not just an expanded Apple lineup with two large-screen iPhones, but a Pixel family that finally lives up to some of Google’s loftier promises. Check out the specs below to see how they compare, and be sure to look at our hands-on sessions with the S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra.

What’s Changed

The centerpiece upgrade, as you may have guessed, is the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s 200-megapixel main camera. It makes the S22 Ultra’s 108MP sensor seem modest, and Samsung claims strong low-light photography as well as 8K video at 30 frames per second. You can also expect an improved 12MP selfie camera on the S23 and S23+ models (up from 10MP) with 60FPS HDR, and those phones can shoot Expert RAW photos at their primary camera’s full 50MP resolution.

After that, the Galaxy S23 series revolves around incremental (if welcome) updates. They all use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, which promises ray-traced graphics and big boosts for AI performance and power efficiency. Batteries are ever-so-slightly larger, and there’s greater use of recycled components. Memory and storage are largely unchanged, although that still delivers up to 12GB of RAM and 1TB of storage on the S23 Ultra. You’ll still want the highest-end device if you crave more than 8GB of RAM and a 1080p display. Simply speaking, there’s no rush to upgrade from the S22 if you’re still happy with its capabilities.

Galaxy S23 Ultra vs. iPhone 14 Pro Max

Galaxy S23 Ultra

iPhone 14 Pro Max

Pricing

Starts at $1,200

Starts at $1,099

Dimensions

163.3 x 78 x 8.9 mm (6.43 x 3.07 x 0.35 in)

160.7 x 77.6 x 7.85 mm (6.33 x 3.05 x 0.31 in)

Weight

233.9g (8.25oz)

240g (8.47oz)

Screen size

6.8in (173mm)

6.7in (170mm)

Screen resolution

3,088 x 1,440 (501PPI)

2,778 x 1,284 (458PPI)

Screen type

AMOLED (120Hz, always on)

Super Retina XDR (120Hz, always on)

Battery

5,000mAh

4,323mAh

Internal storage

128 / 256 / 512 GB / 1 TB

128 / 256 / 512 GB / 1 TB

External storage

None

None

Rear camera(s)

Four cameras:

Wide, 200MP, f/1.7

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.2

Right telephoto, 10MP, f/2.4

Left telephoto, 10MP, f/4.9

Three cameras:

Wide, 48MP f/1.78

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.2

Telephoto, 12MP, f/2.8

Front camera(s)

12MP, f/2.2

12MP, f/1.9

Video capture

8K at 30FPS

4K at 60FPS

SoC

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy

Apple A16 Bionic

CPU

3.36GHz octa-core

3.46GHz hexa-core

GPU

Adreno 740

Apple penta-core GPU

RAM

8 / 12 GB

6 GB

WiFi

WiFi 6e

WiFi 6

Bluetooth

v.5.3

v.5.3

NFC

Yes

Yes

Operating system

Android 13

iOS 16

Other features

USB-C, Qi wireless charging, reverse charging

Lightning, Qi wireless charging, MagSafe charging

Galaxy S23+ vs. Pixel 7 Pro and iPhone 14 Plus

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus
Samsung

Galaxy S23+

Pixel 7 Pro

iPhone 14 Plus

Pricing

Starts at $1,000

Starts at $899

Starts at $899

Dimensions

157.7 x 76.2 x 7.6 mm (6.21 x 3 x 0.3 in)

162.9 x 76.6 x 8.9 mm (6.4 x 3 x 0.35 in)

160.8 x 78.1 x 7.8 mm (6.33 x 3.07 x 0.31 in)

Weight

195.9g (6.9oz)

212g (7.5oz)

203g (7.16oz)

Screen size

6.6in (167.6mm)

6.7in (170.2mm)

6.7in (170.2mm)

Screen resolution

2,340 x 1,080 (422PPI)

3,120 x 1,440

2,778 x 1,284

Screen type

AMOLED (120Hz, always on)

AMOLED (120Hz, always on)

AMOLED (60Hz)

Battery

4,700mAh

5,000mAh

4,323mAh

Internal storage

256 / 512 GB

128 / 256 GB

128 / 256 / 512 GB

External storage

None

None

None

Rear camera(s)

Three cameras:

Wide, 50MP, f/1.8

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.2

Telephoto, 10MP, f/2.4

Three cameras:

Wide, 50MP, f/1.85

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.2

Telephoto, 48MP, f/3.5

Two cameras:

Wide, 12MP, f/1.5

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.4

Front camera(s)

12MP, f/2.2

10.8MP, f/2.2

12MP, f/1.9

Video capture

8K at 30FPS

4K at 60FPS

4K at 60FPS

SoC

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy

Google Tensor G2

Apple A15 Bionic

CPU

3.36GHz octa-core

2.85GHz octa-core

3.24GHz hexa-core

GPU

Adreno 740

Mali-G710 MP07

Apple penta-core GPU

RAM

8GB

12GB

6GB

WiFi

WiFi 6e

WiFi 6e

WiFi 6

Bluetooth

v.5.3

v.5.2

v.5.3

NFC

Yes

Yes

Yes

Operating system

Android 13

Android 13

iOS 16

Other features

USB-C, Qi wireless charging, reverse charging

USB-C, Qi wireless charging, reverse charging

Lightning, Qi wireless charging, MagSafe charging

Galaxy S23 vs. Pixel 7 and iPhone 14

Samsung Galaxy S23
Samsung

Galaxy S23

Pixel 7

iPhone 14

Pricing

Starts at $800

Starts at $599

Starts at $799

Dimensions

146.3 x 70.9 x 7.6 mm (5.76 x 2.8 x 0.3 in)

155.6 x 73.2 x 8.7 mm (6.1 x 2.9 x 0.34 in)

146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8 mm (5.8 x 2.8 x 0.31 in)

Weight

168.1g (5.93oz)

197g (6.95oz)

172g (6.07oz)

Screen size

6.1in (154.94mm)

6.3in (160.5mm)

6.1in (154.94mm)

Screen resolution

2,340 x 1,080 (422PPI)

2,400 x 1,080 (416PPI)

2,532 x 1,170 (460PPI)

Screen type

AMOLED (120Hz, always on)

AMOLED (90Hz, always on)

AMOLED (60Hz)

Battery

3,900mAh

4,355mAh

3,279mAh

Internal storage

128 / 256 GB

128 / 256 GB

128 / 256 / 512 GB

External storage

None

None

None

Rear camera(s)

Three cameras:

Wide, 50MP, f/1.8

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.2

Telephoto, 10MP, f/2.4

Two cameras:

Wide, 50MP, f/1.85

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.2

Two cameras:

Wide, 12MP, f/1.5

Ultra-wide, 12MP, f/2.4

Front camera(s)

12MP, f/2.2

10.8MP, f/2.2

12MP, f/1.9

Video capture

8K at 30FPS

4K at 60FPS

4K at 60FPS

SoC

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy

Google Tensor G2

Apple A15 Bionic

CPU

3.36GHz octa-core

2.85GHz octa-core

3.24GHz hexa-core

GPU

Adreno 740

Mali-G710 MP07

Apple penta-core GPU

RAM

8GB

8GB

6GB

WiFi

WiFi 6e

WiFi 6e

WiFi 6

Bluetooth

v.5.3

v.5.2

v.5.3

NFC

Yes

Yes

Yes

Operating system

Android 13

Android 13

iOS 16

Other features

USB-C, Qi wireless charging, reverse charging

USB-C, Qi wireless charging, reverse charging

Lightning, Qi wireless charging, MagSafe charging

Samsung Galaxy S23 系列登場：更環保設計、極黑拍攝，S23 Ultra 拍攝更高清銀河

Samsung Galaxy S23、Galaxy S23+、Galaxy S23 Ultra 外觀改動不大，翻倍了他們採用回收材質的部件至 12 件，並且是涵蓋手機內外。Galaxy S 系列的核心賣點 — 拍攝功能也在這代有升級，而且還是非常點題的「天文攝影模式」，Galaxy 手機終於可以拍攝到銀河了。…