Over the weekend, Twitter CEO and guy who absolutely doesn’t understand how pronouns work Elon Musk confirmed rumours that Twitter would increase the character limit from 280 to 4,000.
A Twitter user directly asked Musk if the rumour was true, and Musk simply said, “Yes.”
Naturally, Musk didn’t provide any additional information about the change or when people could expect it to come into place. It also remains unclear how a larger character limit could impact the platform. One on hand, it could be helpful in reducing the number of lengthy tweet threads by allowing users to post more detail about a topic at once.
I could also see longer tweets giving people more room to type out detailed responses, enabling more discussion and less angry replies over a few words. That said, I’m not sure if Twitter’s main audience is really interested in reading 4,000 characters of reasonable writing.
And to give you an idea how long 4,000 characters is, this article clocks in at about 1,285 characters, so imagine something about three times longer than this.
It’s no secret that this current console generation has progressed rather slowly.
After more than two years, the majority of games are still cross-gen, with only a few others exclusive to the latest hardware. For that reason alone, I’ve had my eye on Square Enix’s Forspoken, as it’s being made solely for PS5 and PC. Further fuelling my interest is the fact that the game comes from developer Luminous Productions, a team made up of many Final Fantasy XV alums, the most recent numbered entry in my all-time favourite series. The central mix of magic-infused combat and parkour certainly didn’t hurt, either.
Now, after having played three hours of the open-world action-RPG, I have to say that I’ve come away largely impressed. Here’s why.
A lot more than a meme
My demo began in Chapter 2 as our protagonist, Frey Holland (Ella Balinska from Netflix’s Resident Evil), finds herself transported to a mysterious castle in the fantastic land of Athia. As evidenced by her plaid shirt and jeans, she doesn’t actually belong here; she’s a New Yorker. She then discovers a talking bangle on her wrist, which she quickly dubs “Cuff,” and ventures out to find a way home.
Now, before I go any further, I have to address the elephant in the room: Forspoken‘s dialogue. Earlier this year, one viral piece of marketing, in which Frey recaps all of her new outlandish abilities, was heavily criticized for being fast-talking, expository and unnatural. This led people to grow concerned about how grating the rest of the game could be. Luminous developers later responded by saying that these soundbites were taken out of context.
After seeing the full scene in action myself, I’m actually inclined to agree with the team. Several of those lines came early in my demo, after a fight in which Frey discovers her first magical powers, the ability to shoot rocks. With these new abilities, she makes quick work of a pack of wolf-like enemies, leading her to become overwhelmed with emotion — hence, the flurry of “wow, I just did that!”-style lines.
Is this “cringeworthy” like many have said? Sure, but I’d argue it’s cringeworthy in a way that’s reasonably believable and human. I could certainly see this girl, who very clearly has some sort of chip on her shoulder, feeling abundantly confident upon discovering she can fight off monsters with magical powers. It’s that momentary feeling of being on top of the world — invincible, even — that many youth fall prey to.
“Context is really that key thing. We’ve created what we believe is a very original character, a very fresh-feeling character, who is very complex and has so many different sides to her. She’s determined, she’s got a great sense of humour, but she’s also got a soft, kind of vulnerable side as well. And it’s hard to convey all that as a new IP, without any kind of past knowledge of the title or the story and try to introduce this new character out into the world,” says Raio Mitsuno, creative producer on Forspoken.
“It’s been a little bit of a challenge, because we don’t want to give away the story. We want to make sure that’s intact for players when they get to play the game. So we’ve been selective about what we show There’s a lot more to the character. She’s a character we could all go for. I think everyone’s going to feel a connection to her, and you’ll see her go through so many things. And I think she’s a character that a lot of people are going to fall in love with.”
Another side of this scene that was left out of the trailers is Cuff, who’s trying to keep Frey’s briefly inflated ego in check. In this way, I found myself quickly taking a liking to the sentient bracelet. With his soothing English tones, he initially seems like Iron Man’s AI J.A.R.V.I.S., but that betrays his decidedly droll and deprecating personality. This creates a humourous and engaging buddy cop-esque rapport between the two unwitting allies. Some of the barks during combat even elicited a chuckle, like Cuff asking the player to avoid getting hit again and Frey telling him to “shut the **** up” with a surprising bluntness.
” is partly a narrative tool to allow her to get a sense of the world and act as a guide, so to speak, but also be useful in battle and exploration. And the other idea with Cuff is, instead of just making it a useful tool, we wanted to give it a character and make it a personality on its own that can match the screen presence of Frey, even though it’s just a voice. Once we found , who was perfect for the role, we wanted to find a personality that could create that great chemistry with Frey and have those kind of back-and-forth conversations,” says Mitsuno. “Their relationship is at the core of the story, too. As much as it is Frey’s journey, he’s there every step of the way, and you see their relationship go through these many changes as well. It’s very essential to the overall experience.”
It’s also clear that Luminous is looking to build up intrigue by leaving elements of Frey’s backstory a mystery, considering the demo began after the introductory New York chapter. As I played, there were certainly some hints sprinkled throughout; in one instance, she hints at having a complicated relationship with her father, and even when she’s sent through the portal to Athia, a sign that says “Holland Tunnel” can be seen behind her, suggesting she comes from some sort of wealth or influence. Seeing these seeds planted during my demo has me interested to find out where things go, especially since I’m a sucker for “daddy issues” stories.
According to Mitsuno, it’s the pursuit of such deeper character beats that resulted in Luminous tapping a Western writing team that consists of the likes of Uncharted creator Amy Hennig, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story co-writer Gary Whitta and Shadowhunters writer Allison Rymer.
“We’ve developed Final Fantasy games with these big, giant stories, but what they really excel at, what they really brought to Forspoken, is this micro level of looking at the human aspect of the story. Like, what Frey goes through and the relationships that she forms and how it all basically contributes to her growth and the trajectory that she goes on during this journey. So that was what we thought was really nice — that they were able to bring this really human element to the story.”
Not all of the story material has worked for me so far, though. For instance, Frey’s anger over the Chapter 3 death of a little girl named Olevia at the hands of one of the game’s villains, Tanta Sila, didn’t land quite as hard as it should given the relatively brief time they spend together. But in general, I like Frey and Cuff so far, and I enjoyed unpacking more of the game’s lore, which includes how the world and once-benevolent Tanta matriarchs have become corrupted by a mysterious force that Frey dubs the “Break.” It’s certainly not nearly as well-written as, say, Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it’s still much more promising than trailers would lead you to believe, and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
Quite the magical gameplay experience
With all of the story talk out of the way, I’ll get into what was easily the highlight of my time with Forspoken: the gameplay. Simply put, it’s some of the most fun I’ve had with combat and traversal systems in a while.
On a base level, the game just benefits from an unparalleled sense of flashiness that’s afforded by the PS5. Put another way: if Final Fantasy XV was awe-inspiring for the scale of its massive summons that strike the battlefield with earth-shattering, terrain-altering magic, then Forspoken takes that several steps further by letting you be such a force of nature yourself. And because of the added graphical power of the PS5, Forspoken has some of the most impressive display of particle effects and colourful environmental effects I’ve ever seen. From the way Frey’s vines smash out of the ground and spray debris everywhere to how she sears the ground with magmatic sparks, I was constantly marvelling at the visual splendour. It becomes quickly apparent how the game is benefiting from being current-gen-only, and that’s before you factor in the practically instantaneous fast-travel — the quickest I’ve ever seen in a console game.
“We felt that designing this new IP for the PS5, which is new hardware, was really an ideal opportunity to really showcase what the game can do with the high-speed SSD and adaptive triggers,” says Takeshi Aramaki, Forspoken co-director and head of Luminous. “These are all features that we’re really able to show off because we’re able to develop for the PS5, and the magic parkour and traversal and all of that high intensity, high-speed, is possible because of the PlayStation 5. So we really wanted to deliver a brand new game experience to new players.”
Spectacle aside, though, Frey’s moveset is just remarkably varied. Even when you first start off, her rock powers offer a surprising amount of versatility. For example, her standard Burst Shot fires clusters of rocks at the enemy, and you can charge this up to hurl a larger projectile. Initially, this starts as a small clump of earth, but I was pleased to see that upgrading this ability turned it into a sizeable boulder. These heavy-hitting attacks nicely contrast the Scatter Shot, in which Frey holds out her fingers, Emperor Palpatine-style, to pepper enemies with smaller debris before launching a big cluster, and the Shield Shot, which gives you a defensive rocky wall that you can charge up to then explode into smaller particles. It’s a rather ingenious system that keeps combat more manageable and less input-heavy than some other action games while still affording you a good amount of options.
Support abilities can also help turn the tides of battle. These include vines that can ensnare enemies and leave them open for follow-up attacks, a Venus Flytrap-esque plant that can whittle away at enemies on its own and a plantlike whip that can sap enemy health to replenish your own. And if that weren’t enough, large area of effect supermoves called ‘Surges’ are available once you fill up a metre by using attack and support abilities. Being able to summon hordes of thorny branches to skewer my enemies with the ‘Genesis’ Surge never got old during my demo.
“Since this is an action game, first and foremost, we wanted to make sure to maintain this balance of distance between the players and the different magic that they were using,” explains Takefumi Terada, co-director of Forspoken. “For example, at the start of the game, there’s a lot of mid-range magic that’s available to players and then as you progress in the game, there’s fire-based magic that’s more closer-range, and then later on there’s more water-based magic, which is like a further-range magic spell. So we were very conscious of making the distance between the player and then the battles and then we created four schools of magic as a basis.”
Indeed, my only real gripe with the combat early on was that Frey felt like she was lacking a melee option, and as Terada promised, one came towards the end of my demo. After beating Tanta Sila, Frey is able to absorb her powers, adding the villain’s sword-based fire attacks to her arsenal. Since I wasn’t allowed to go past this point, Square Enix instead booted up a different, more curated demo — the one that was just dropped for free onto the PlayStation Store — in which I could sample Sila’s abilities. Immediately, I fell in love with these moves. Besides a flaming sword always being inherently cool, it just felt gratifying to use, with Frey whirling around with delightful Devil May Cry-esque flair.
Complementing these close-range moves are Sila’s even more impressive Support abilities, which offer all sorts of crowd control benefits. My favourite, by far, was Crucible, in which Frey conjures up a giant wall of fire around her to entrap her foes; it felt like the ultimate power fantasy. But the other fire Support moves were well-worth using, too, like Bombardier, which sees Frey punt an enemy and cause a fiery explosion, or Legion, which calls forth enflamed zombie allies. The spectacle and utility of these moves is remarkable, and it made me feel like an absolute badass. In some ways, it’s the Dr. Strange game I’d always hoped for.
Altogether, Luminous says there are around 100 spells that Frey can use, including electric and water powers I didn’t get to play around with, and the thought of uncovering them all in the final game is quite tantalizing.
“This is really also well-suited to the open-world environment that players are placed in. Since it’s such a huge world with many different corners, there’s different areas where there’s magic that’s more in line with searching for things and then other parts where there’s magic that deals a lot of damage in combat,” adds Terada. “And since Athia has so many different areas, and there’s so many different magic spells that come out of that you can use, so this is very suited for just having a variety of 100 different spells that you can use, because the world is so large.”
I didn’t get too much of a bearing on how the new types of magic that Frey learns will actually help with traversal, but even at the start, her magical parkour is extremely fluid and satisfying. Her base movement ability, Flow, lets her run at high-speeds while vaulting over low objects in oh-so stylish twirls and tumbles. (Flow also allows for equally graceful dodges in combat.) Frey can also bound up walls with timed jumps to gain some verticality, which is essential in Athia’s often mountainous terrain. With so many open-world games relying on vehicles or even horses to get around, it’s refreshing to have this unique spin on parkour at the heart of Forspoken.
It feels appropriately paced, too, as Flow has a stamina metre that quickly replenishes. On-the-fly management of your stamina, including using abilities to instantly top it up at key moments, helps maintain a thrilling sense of momentum during traversal. Luminous has also teased several ways in which the parkour will only continue to expand, like a fire-based whip to pull Frey to new heights or a surfboard to glide along bodies of water. It’s easy to imagine how all of these could be used in conjunction to make zipping around the map feel immensely engaging and even rewarding.
I do, however, have some concerns with the open-world itself. It’s definitely pretty, like the rest of the game, and it’s got an old European-inspired vibe that feels lovingly reminiscent at times of classic Final Fantasy games. But it also feels a little barren at times, with NPCs seemingly relegated to cities, while the icon-filled map that includes timed challenges, stat-increasing landmarks and photo snapping missions feels a bit like a relic from the last console generation. Admittedly, my demo was primarily focused on going through story missions, so it’s certainly possible I’ll come to appreciate all of this more. For now, though, I have some reservations.
Just give it a chance!
After my extensive hands-on with Forspoken, I honestly have to say that the hate Forspoken has been getting is pretty overblown. Having actually played the game, I’m now a lot more confident in Luminous’ vision. While it remains to be seen how the broader story and open-world will play out, the moment-to-moment gameplay and character interactions have won me over so far. Frey’s magical abilities, in particular, are, so far, an absolute blast to use and well-worth the price of admission alone.
If you have a PS5 or PC and like action games, you should absolutely keep Forspoken on your radar when it releases on PlayStation 5 and PC on January 24th, 2023.
Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday, December 12th, 2022. I’m Howard Solomon, contributing reporter on cybersecurity for ITWorldCanada.com.
Just shy of US$1 million in prize money was awarded to security researchers at the end of the four-day Pwn2Own hacking contest in Toronto. In this edition of the event, sponsored by Trend Micro, participants demonstrated 63 unique zero-day exploits by breaking into home and small office routers and printers. The biggest bundle of cash went to a team from Devcore Security Consulting of Taiwan, which won US$142,500. As a result it was named the event’s Master of Pwn. The total amount awarded to all participants was $989,750. The biggest payout of the series was at the 2021 event in Vancouver, where participants won US$1.2 million. The next competition will be in Miami in February.
A week after suffering a ransomware attack Rackspace Technology is facing a legal attack. A California law firm is proposing a class action lawsuit against the hosting provider over the incident. The suit still has to be certified by a state court. On Friday Rackspace said it is still investigating the cause of the attack. It says the attack was contained to its hosted Microsoft Exchange service. Rackspace is also still helping customers recover their data. It hasn’t said how much, if any, data was encrypted, or copied by the hackers
After a few days of reflection, experts have had an opportunity to size up the security and privacy announcements made last week by Apple. It’s expanding the range of data users can protect with end-to-end encryption in iCloud. Currently, health information, passwords and payment card data can be protected this way. Soon photos, notes and iCloud backups can also get extra protection. In a commentary William Murrary, a member of the SANS Institute’s editorial board, noted this is device-to-device encryption, not true end-to-end encryption. Another SANS commentator predicts it won’t be long before U.S. intelligence agencies and police forces protest Apple’s latest move will impair investigations.
Texas and Maryland have joined South Dakota, South Carolina and Nebraska in forbidding state employees from using the Chinese-owned TikTok app on government-issued computing devices. This comes after the FBI called the video-sharing app a U.S. national security concern. Earlier this year TikTok’s chief operating officer told the U.S. Senate that the company complies with U.S. laws and has strict company rules over what data employees can access.
Air-gapped computers are isolated from the internet for the best IT security. However, an Israeli university researcher argues that if compromised in the right way a hacker can transmit supposedly protected data from an air-gapped computer to a very nearby smartphone. How? Over the electromagnetic signals emitted from a PC’s power supply. However, first, an attacker would have to physically plant malware on the computer. But that’s been done before, by someone in 2008 to a U.S. military classified computer. So it’s not Mission Impossible. Government, banking and research organizations depending on air-gapped computers have to continue to limit access to areas with these machines — and be suspicious of anyone hanging around them.
Software supply chain security is one of the most critical risk to any organization, says Google. Which is why it has launched a new research report detailing how developers should make open-source software more secure. One is by using a framework called supply-chain levels for software artifacts, or SLSA. It includes a checklist of controls and practices to prevent the tampering of code.
Australian police are now publicizing the arrest there of four Chinese nationals who are charged with being part of the $100 million investment scam. Most of the victims were people in the U.S. It is alleged the operation found victims on dating employment and messaging sites, where, after gaining the confidence of people, investment opportunities in things like cryptocurrency were raised. The U.S. Secret Service tipped off the Australians about the link to their country. Two men were arrested in October. The other two were arrested last month just before trying to board planes to Hong Kong. Police allege the gang behind the scam used the four accused to register Australian companies and to open bank accounts so money could be laundered.
Finally, a month ago I told listeners that this is the time of year when crooks try to trick employees in many ways, including with email-delivered gift card scams. The crook impersonates a corporate executive and asks a staff member to buy gift cards — with their own money — to reward employees for work well done during the year. The scam is asking the victim to send the so-called executive the numbers on the back of the cards. Then the crook can cash them in. A new report from Trustwave warns employees that crooks are increasingly trying this type of scam in text messages. Again, the sender pretends to be a corporate executive who comes up with some excuse why they can’t do the card-buying themself. Sometimes the request starts with an email, then the crook asks the messaging to switch to text. So, be aware of text and email messages like this.
Follow Cyber Security Today on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or add us to your Flash Briefing on your smart speaker.
Amazon has discounted its popular Alexa-enabled Echo Show and Echo Dot smart devices. Not only this, but the massive online retailer has bundled in a free smart bulb to brighten up your home.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though we may earn a commission on purchases made via these links that helps fund the journalism provided free on our website.
Uber files a lawsuit to stop New York City driver pay increase, United Auto Workers win their vote in the first U.S. electric vehicle battery plant, and poor software has potentially cost the U.S. $2.4 trillion.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday December 12th and I am your host, Samira Balsara.
In November, the New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) voted to increase the pay rates of Uber and Lyft drivers in order to make up for the rise in inflation and operational costs. According to a report from Engadget, these new rates were supposed to be implemented on December 19th, however Uber has now sued the commission to block the new rates from taking effect. Uber said in its lawsuit that it would have to spend an additional $21 million to $23 million per month if the new rates are implemented. Uber said it wouldn’t be able to recover those costs without raising its fares. The drivers’ per-minute rates are going up by 7.18 per cent and per-mile rates by 16.11 percent under the new rules. Now, for a 7.5-mile trip that takes 30 minutes, a driver would earn at least $27.15, which is $2.50 more than current rates.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union won an election at a General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solution Ltd. electric-car battery plant in Ohio, rewarding the union its first win in a factory of that kind. Workers at Ultium Cells LLC voted in favour of union representation with a 710 to 16 vote. The plant will make battery cells for electric vehicles like the Hummer electric pickup. The union plans to organize workers in future plants that are being built across the U.S. to support automakers making the switch to zero-emission vehicles. Factories need to be organized to make EV parts as the demand from automakers to replace internal combustion engines with zero-emission vehicles continues to grow. Workers at Ultium are currently making $15.50 or $16.50 an hour. The victory allows UAW to negotiate a labour contract that pushes toward the $32-an-hour rate for workers at GM’s wholly owned auto-assembly plants. According to a report from Bloomberg, employees who were interviewed last week said they hope to make at least $24 an hour if the union organizes the plant.
Software quality issues may have cost the United States economy $2.41 trillion this year. According to Synopsys Inc.’s ‘The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the U.S.: A 2022 Report’, the cost of poor software quality in the U.S. — which includes cyberattacks due to existing vulnerabilities and complex issues involving the software supply chain, have led to a build-up of historic software deficiencies. Highlights from the report include cybercrime losses due to a rising number of software vulnerabilities. Losses rose 64 per cent from 2020 to 2021 and are on track for a further 42 per cent increase from 2021 to 2022. The quantity and cost of cybercrime incidents have been on the rise for over a decade, and now account for a sum equivalent to the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China.
Samsung Canada is teaming up again with the SickKids foundation for their annual Sweater Love fundraising campaign. This is the third consecutive year Samsung is supporting the campaign as a matching gift partner, matching donations made by the public until midnight on December 24, up to a maximum of $100,000. Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds is also joining the campaign to support fundraising for SickKids Foundation. Reynolds has also enlisted the support of Canadian actor Seth Rogen, to draw attention to the cause. Throughout the campaign, Samsung will also donate $1 for every purchase made online at Samsung.com, up to a maximum of $10,000. To make a donation to SickKids Foundation, you can visit the “Help Ryan Help SickKids” page.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Samira Balsara.
With December already halfway over, the peak holiday season is almost upon us. In two weeks’ time, everyone will be off work, spending time with their friends, family and loved ones. Although a generally happy and carefree time, procrastinating about buying gifts, or just finding gifts for people that are difficult to shop for can make the carefree season full of anxiety and stress.
Luckily for you, MobileSyrup has put together an editorial gift guide to show off some of our top gift ideas for this year, be it for gamers, responsible adults that love to clean or movie lovers.
Browse below for links to smart vacuums, smart displays, electric scooters, and other fun tech accessories that would make for solid gifts this holiday season.
MobileSyrup utilizes affiliate partnerships and publishes sponsored posts. These partnerships do not influence our editorial content, though MobileSyrup may earn a commission on purchases made via these links.
Twelve months after police charged two men with compromising Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine management system, the province has identified and started notifying the 360,000 residents whose personal data was copied.
The Canadian Press reports the government said the delay is because of the time it took to determine the scale and impact of the breach.
The province said for about 95 per cent of the 360,000 people affected, only their names and/or phone numbers were involved. CITY-TV news quoted the province saying that four per cent of individuals had their health card number compromised.
Two people – a 22-year-old from Gloucester, Ont. who worked at the vaccine contact centre in the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, and a Quebec man – have been each charged with unauthorized use of a computer.
CBC News reported that authorities became suspicious when people who had scheduled their vaccine appointments or accessed their vaccine certificates through the provincial booking system complained of getting spam text messages asking for personal information.
Tech reporters have the luxury of trying out new gadgets all the time. Unfortunately, the focus is often on what’s new, and after the initial review, there often isn’t much written about how products hold up over time. With that in mind, MobileSyrup wants to start revisiting some old tech we’ve used beyond that initial review period to see what holds up and what doesn’t. I’ll be kicking things off the Microsoft Surface Earbuds, which sound as good today as when I reviewed them in May 2020.
That said, when I reviewed the Surface Earbuds, I wrote that they don’t offer the best sound. That remains true — I could use a nice pair of over-ear headphones and get better sound quality. However, that applies to just about every pair of wireless earbuds. Over-ear headphones will almost always sound better thanks to the larger drivers, and wired headphones can go even further for those who want to take advantage of high-fidelity music.
But for me, the Surface Earbuds sound good enough to serve as my primary listening device. Aside from the headphones I use when gaming on my PC, the Surface Earbuds have been my go-to for listening to music and podcasts while working from home, travelling to the office on the train, and more.
Moreover, the battery life has held up well on the Surface Earbuds. In my initial review, I wrote that I could get five-and-a-half to six hours of listening on a charge. Honestly, I rarely use the earbuds for more than a few hours at a time these days. It’s not that the battery doesn’t last that long, I just find my ears start to get uncomfortable after a few hours (and the Surface Earbuds are among the more comfortable earbuds I’ve tried). I can usually wear headphones for longer, but that’s because they don’t sit in my ear like earbuds.
Similarly, the charging case has held up well, and beyond quite a few scratches, it still works great and keeps my earbuds topped up. I still wish it had wireless charging, but I don’t mind occasionally plugging in the charging case.
While some might not like spending $259.99 on wireless earbuds without noise cancellation, I’ve come to appreciate not having it over the last two years. I mostly use the Surface Earbuds while working at home or while commuting. When at home, usually, it’s quiet enough that I don’t need noise cancellation, and I appreciate being able to hear what’s going on around me in case someone needs to get my attention. While commuting, I also like hearing what’s going on around me while I’m walking, so I don’t miss my stop on the train. Sure, having the option to toggle on noise cancellation when I need it would be nice, but I haven’t felt like I needed it so far.
On top of all that, the Surface Earbuds lasted two-and-a-half years. I didn’t realize just how long that was until the other evening when a friend told me they were on their fourth pair of earbuds this year. Moreover, MobileSyrup editor-in-chief Patrick O’Rourke ran into noise cancellation issues with the first-gen AirPods Pro roughly six months after getting a pair, although that was a larger problem that Apple ultimately launched a replacement program for. While admittedly a small sample size, it struck me that I’ve used the Surface Earbuds for years and connected them to tons of smartphones and laptops without any issues.
Plus, the Surface Earbuds are still among the most unique earbuds available, save for maybe Samsung’s beans Galaxy Buds Live. I still get occasional comments from people over the Surface Earbuds because they kinda look like spacers in my ears.
Some of my favourite trailers from the event include Hades II, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Remnant 2, Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, Lords of the Fallen 2, and even Wild Hearts, although that game seems Monster Hunter-like, which I’m not a fan of.
These titles looked excellent and were nearly all up my alley. I loved Hades, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Remnant from the Ashes, and while I didn’t play Lords of the Fallen, it’s a Souls-like, one of my favourite genres. With that in mind, I have high hopes for Lords of the Fallen 2 (hopefully, the balancing is fixed, given this was an issue with the first title).
And out of all of these games, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the game I was the most hyped about. Let us know in the comments below which Game Awards trailer got you the most excited.
Apple’s new iPhone Camera Continuity feature makes setting up shots for video meetings a lot more fun, but unsurprisingly, it doesn’t work well with Google Chrome. However, I’ve found it works great in the beta version, Chrome Canary.
This suggests that the situation will improve with standard Chrome soon, but if you’re like me and want to jump on things early, this workaround is fairly seamless. You can also try these steps in your Chrome version since I have seen reports online of it working in the standard build.
To start, you need to ensure that you have macOS Ventura and iOS 16 downloaded on your iPhone. Once those updates are finalized, you should be able to select your iPhone from the dropdown menu of any webcam software as long as your phone and Mac are close together. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work that seamlessly yet, but I expect that most major apps will update to support it.
What to do in Chrome?
Once you’ve downloaded Chrome Canary, open the app’s Settings page via the three-dot menu in the top right-hand corner. From there, open the ‘Privacy and Security sub-menu and choose ‘Camera:’
Settings>Privacy and Security>Camera
Sometimes it takes a few seconds to appear, but a dropdown menu should be at the top of the page, allowing you to choose your preferred camera. If your iPhone isn’t on the list, try opening up FaceTime and seeing if it’s available there.
Once FaceTime is activated, you can open the ‘Video’ option from the Menu bar, and your iPhone should be listed as a camera.
Does it work in other browsers?
Reports show it works well in the Brave browser and Microsoft Edge. Surprisingly, I’ve had little success with it in Safari.
Apple also notes on its support page that if the feature isn’t working, you can try the following troubleshooting steps;
Make sure that your iPhone and Mac meet the system requirements.
Make sure that your iPhone is properly mounted.
Install the latest macOS updates, iOS updates, and updates for your video app.
If you haven’t unlocked your iPhone since it last restarted, unlock it, then lock it again.
Plug your iPhone into your Mac.
Restart your iPhone or Mac.