Amazon’s Kindle Kids e-readers are up to $50 off right now

Amazon is selling the 2022 Kindle Kids at a discount for the first time since it was released in September last year. The e-reader is currently on sale for $85 or $35 less than its retail price of $120. If your child wants a device with a bigger screen…

Lenovo 新春優惠，ThinkPad X1 Carbon G10 大減 HK$3,800

Lenovo 網店上正推出兔年新春折扣，多款筆電特價發售，當中 ThinkPad X1 Carbon G10 可以使用優惠券「X1CSPECIAL」獲得 HK$3,800 的大額折扣，指定 ThinkBook 及 ThinkPad 系列亦可使用「CNY2023」最多減 HK$300，新年來換新筆電！…

The Morning After: NVIDIA’s GeForce Now Ultimate is a high-end cloud gaming service

While Google shuttered Stadia for good this week, other cloud gaming services are expanding their offerings. NVIDIA is upgrading its GeForce Now service with a bunch of features, thanks to the addition of new SuperPODs equipped with RTX 4080 GPUs. This seems to be the first truly high-end cloud gaming experience. The renamed Ultimate plan now includes support for refresh rates of up to 240Hz at full HD or 4K at 120 fps and an expanded set of usable widescreen resolutions (3,840×1,600, 3,440×1,440 and 2,560×1,080).

NVIDIA is also adding better support for HDR on both Macs and PCs, along with the ability to use full ray tracing with DLSS3 in supported games. This elevates GeForce Now above rivals like Xbox Cloud Gaming, which is capped at 1080p/60 fps. There are the usual cloud gaming caveats: NVIDIA’s recommended minimum bandwidth for gaming at 1080p at 240 fps is 35 Mbps.

If you want to max out at 4K/120 fps, Engadget’s Sam Rutherford notes you’ll need at least a 45 Mbps connection. These new SuperPODs have limited availability, too. At launch, new servers with 4080 GPUs will be in four places: San Jose, Los Angeles, Dallas and Frankfurt, Germany. That means only people in the US and Central Europe will experience NVIDIA’s best cloud gaming experience, for now.

– Mat Smith

The Morning After isn’t just a newsletter – it’s also a daily podcast. Get our daily audio briefings, Monday through Friday, by subscribing right here.

The biggest stories you might have missed

Samsung’s display injunction worries repair technicians

It requested an investigation into third-party OLED display imports.

Samsung may have a way to strike a hefty blow to the United States’ burgeoning right-to-repair movement. If the ITC (International Trade Commission) finds in the company’s favor, it would, in the words of Louis Rossmann (who published the text of the complaint), “fire a kill shot on the entire repair industry.” Samsung says several patents cover its AMOLED displays. But factories in China (and elsewhere) are, according to the company, churning out similar screens that infringe on those patents. Several businesses named in Samsung’s complaint include MobileSentrix, Injured Gadgets and DFW Cellphone & Parts. Many offer wholesale parts and equipment to other repair companies, as well as their own repair services. If Samsung’s request is successful, it could prevent large volumes of third-party OLED displays from being imported to the US, curtailing the repair ecosystem for one of the most crucial to your smartphone: the screen.

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Twitter’s new developer terms officially ban third-party clients

The company quietly updated its terms a week after cutting off prominent app makers.

In case there was any doubt about Twitter’s intentions in cutting off the developers of third-party apps, the company has quietly updated its developer agreement to make clear that app makers may not create their own clients. The “restrictions” section of Twitter’s developer agreement was updated Thursday with a clause banning “use or access to the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” The company’s suggestion that the rule was “longstanding” doesn’t line up with its history. Twitter clients have long been a part of Twitter. Twitterrific, one of the most prominent apps affected by the API shut-off last week, was created before Twitter had its own native iOS app. Twitterific is even credited with coining the word “tweet.”

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‘Tron 3’ may finally be happening with Jared Leto

I.. OK?

TMA
Disney

It’s been over 12 years since Tron: Legacy debuted, and those who’ve been longing for a third entry in the classic sci-fi series may get what they asked for. Tron: Ares, as the film may be called, could start filming this August with Jared Leto, ol’ Morbius himself, reportedly set to star, with Joachim Rønning (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) is in talks to direct, according to Deadline. Leto first signed on back in 2017, but Disney had a third movie on the backburner long before then. Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski said in 2015 that he wrote and storyboarded a sequel “that takes place on the internet with Yahoo and Google and all those sites.”

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Netflix co-founder steps down as co-CEO

Reed Hastings will still serve as executive chair.

Netflix co-creator Reed Hastings is stepping down as the company’s co-CEO. Ted Sarandos, who has been co-CEO since July 2020, will share the reins with newly promoted operations chief Greg Peters. Hastings’ departure comes as Netflix slowly recovers from a grim 2022. It lost subscribers for the first time in over a decade and blamed a combination of fiercer competition and widespread account sharing. In its recent earnings report, it announced adding 7.66 million new customers, reaching 230.75 million subscribers.

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Bungie offers displaced Stadia ‘Destiny 2’ players a free month of GeForce Now

Now that Stadia is gone, Bungie is steering players toward NVIDIA’s GeForce Now. The developer has offered Destiny 2 users a free month on the game streaming service, sending unique codes to each user, according to an email seen by 9to5Google. “We managed to snag some free codes for NVIDIA’s high-performance cloud gaming platform,” Bungie wrote. “Redeem your one-month code of a GeForce Now priority membership, for free.” 

Destiny 2 featured prominently in Stadia’s marketing up until the end, but also figured in GeForce Now promotion for various devices, as shown in the image above. Of the remaining cloud services, Destiny 2 is available on GeForce Now but not Xbox Cloud, Amazon’s Luna or PlayStation Now. 

Google announced in September that it would shut down Stadia for good as the service failed to gain traction with users. It refunded all game and hardware sales, and some game studios stepped in to help port games over to other services. If you have a Stadia controller, you can enable Bluetooth support via an online tool so it can be used with PC, iOS or Android devices.

Bungie’s offer was sent to each Destiny 2 user, so check your inbox for the invitation and unique code, then be sure to redeem it before February 19th. That will give you a free month of GeForce Now Priority, which offers 1080p gaming, 6-hour session lengths and up to 60fps refresh rates (it’ll cost $10 per month or $50 for six months after that). The service just introduced a new Ultimate membership tier with a new RTX 4080 boost that offers 4K resolutions, 8-hour sessions and up to 120 fps for $20 per month, or $100 for six months.

T-Mobile data breach compromised 37 million customers’ data

T-Mobile has admitted that hackers were able to steal the information of around 37 million postpaid and prepaid customers in another major data breach. The carrier said in a regulatory filing that it discovered the issue on January 5th, but that it bel…

LG OLED Flex 開箱動手玩：一鍵自動彎曲的電視 / 電競螢幕

LG OLED Flex 最近在香港結束了預購活動，宣告這款能一鍵自動彎曲的電視 / 電競螢幕已經以 HK$24,980 進入市場了。小編就來先為大家開箱一下這台 LG OLED Flex，看看是怎樣讓它「曲直不分」。

Epic and Match antitrust case against Google goes to trial November 6th

Epic Games and Match Group now have a court date for their antitrust case against Google. A Northern District of California judge has set the start of a jury trial for November 6th. Both Epic and Match accuse Google of abusing its control of Android app distribution through the Play Store by establishing unfair fees and requirements for in-app purchases. This comes alongside a lawsuit from 39 attorneys general as well as a customer class action suit demanding $4.7 billion in damages.

Epic sued Google in 2020 after the Android creator kicked Fortnite out of the Play Store for letting customers use an alternative in-app payment system. Match sued Google last year over the “exorbitant” store fee. Epic and Match consolidated their case and a filed motion last fall to expand their allegations, accusing Google of further antitrust violations by paying major developers hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their apps in the Play Store. 

Unlike Epic’s partially successful lawsuit against Apple, this case has to acknowledge that customers do have a choice. Where Apple requires that all regular app downloads go through the App Store, Android’s sideloading option lets customers install software without downloading it from Google. The issue, as you might imagine, is that those apps are both harder to install and less likely to be noticed when the Play Store is included by default on many Android phones.

Google denies misusing its power, and argues that the fees are necessary to maintain and invest in the Play Store. It maintains that the incentive program doesn’t forbid developers from launching third-party stores, and that its portal competes fairly. In December, Google called on the court to deny the expanded requests over timing and other issues.

Google has made some concessions, including a test program for Play Store billing alternatives. That pilot still gives Google a cut of each transaction, though, and it remains to be seen if moves like that will satisfy the court and regulators. As it is, the internet pioneer is facing a raft of other antitrust cases that include a Justice Department lawsuit from 2020. Even if Google prevails against Epic and Match, it may not escape unscathed.