Tuesday, March 7, 2023

HBO Max: The 23 Absolute Best Movies to Watch - CNET

Check out 2023 Oscar best picture nominees Elvis and The Banshees of Inisherin.

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I'm a little disappointed that Apple didn't give a name to the yellow it splashed on its iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. It's just yellow, or Yellow iPhone 14. At least the really deep blue got 'Midnight' but Apple clearly had no interest in something like "Banana Yellow," "Sunflower Yellow," or "Merengue Yellow."

Look, it's not just me. After I unboxed the gleaming yellow handset and showed it to coworkers and colleagues, more than one asked about the name. They, too, were sad that Apple didn't go the Samsung route and name it, say, "Lemon Yellow" like Samsung's "Bora Purple," which when translated out of Korean means "Purple Purple."

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow in the sunlight. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

The new color variant, which takes the total of iPhone 14 color options to six, was unveiled without fanfare on Tuesday (March 7). It brings a glossy yellow back, a burnished yellow tinted metal band, and new pale yellow wallpaper to the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. They go on pre-order on March 10, 2023, and ship on March 14.

Aside from the cheery new finish, there is nothing different about this iPhone 14 (the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max do not get the new hue). there's the same dual 12MP rear camera system and front-facing, 12MP TrueDepth camera; the same 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display; and the same last-gen A15 Bionic CPU. It's just as good an iPhone now as it was when I reviewed it in a different color.

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow edge. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

My take

When I was in kindergarten, the teacher asked us all our favorite color. In a panic, and because I had not once in my five years considered this question, I blurted out "yellow." Before long I had yellow shirts, hats, and a yellow placemat with my name on it. The color has stuck with me for decades. Even now, if you were to ask me my favorite color, I'd say, " yellow," while secretly still having no idea.

Now, as I stare at this lovely and quite cheerful 6.1-inch smartphone, I'm confronted again with the question of color preference. This is a gorgeous smartphone. As always, Apple puts the color under the rear panel glass and basically embeds it in the metal band surrounding the phone. This enhances the premium look and feel. But how do I feel about the color?

Image 1 of 4

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow

More yellow than this truck. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Image 2 of 4

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow

A lot more yellow than a yellow cab. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Image 3 of 4

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow

More yellow than this bus. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Image 4 of 4

Apple iPhone 14 Yellow

The closes yellow I could find are those park employees in the background. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)

Unlike the Purple iPhone 14 or my Space Black iPhone 14 Pro, the yellow iPhone 14 almost shouts, "look at me!" There is no way to hide this handset when you take it out of your pocket. And don't think the yellow MagSafe case will save you from looks. It's an even brighter shade of yellow.

As for the new yellow theme wallpaper, which will launch soon in an iOS update, it's the picture of subtlety. You might not even realize it has a yellow tint.

I took the phone outside and held it in front of a yellow truck, a yellow bus, and a New York City yellow taxi cab. Guess what? None of those things are truly yellow. They're all various shades of orange. The yellow iPhone is true yellow, my friends.

After I'd had my fill of the yellow submarine iPhone experience, I started asking for more third-party input.

Yellow phone Reactions

I just held the yellow iPhone 14 up in front of people and waited for reactions. It never took long. Yellow smacks you in the face. Most people I spoke to seemed pleased, or at least intrigued, by the new DayGlo finish.

One guy pointed out that yellow is coded "neither masculine nor feminine," which is a pretty astute observation. This is a springtime (if you live in the northern hemisphere) color that could appeal to all. Perhaps Apple is releasing it now and in this color to propel iPhone sales (I have no information that they're slow at all) with a hue that anyone can carry.

Now here's something I hadn't considered: changing tastes. I recently redid my kitchen and instead of muted tones, we went with bold, deep blue cabinets. It's lovely. I don't think we would've considered yellow but then we're probably not that on-trend.

I also think Michelle nailed it on the color: Frozen mango sorbet.

Okay, John's issues seem to go beyond the yellow, but I've heard this sentiment elsewhere. Yellow is not groundbreaking and, as others pointed out, we'd be more excited if Apple paired this announcement with the introduction of yellow AirPods.

Instead, Apple seems to want credit for introducing a yellow iPhone 14 as if it's some kind of innovation. It's not, clearly.

A rather unscientific Twitter poll seemed more in line with John's sentiment, with most people saying they didn't like it very much. On the bright yellow side, more than a third said they love it.

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John's frustration was an outlier among the insta-reactions I got.  Most people seemed either enchanted by the new color or at least willing to admit that it will get noticed.

I wonder who might feel torn between buying the yellow iPhone 14 they want and a high-performance iPhone 14 Pro, which is not available in yellow.

Michelle, though, countered with the notion that "regular people" (meaning people who haven't dedicated their lives to geeky pursuits) will probably choose this Yellow iPhone 14 over an iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.

Maybe so.

At the very least, I have to agree with one colleague who told me that when you take it out of your pocket, "people are gonna go 'wow.'"



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Use Notes App to Have Secret Conversations on Your iPhone - CNET

The built-in iOS app is useful for more than just grocery lists.

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Grab a New Roomba i4 Robot Vacuum for $200 -- Today Only - CNET

Grab a vacuum that can take care of tidying up your floors for half the price during this one-day sale.

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Monday, March 6, 2023

5 Best Cheap Qi Wireless Charging Pads Under $20 - CNET

Looking for a cheap wireless charging pad for your Qi-enabled phone? Here are the top picks tested by CNET experts.

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Twitter thrives on shares, not just within the social media platform but from partner links all over the Internet. Except on Monday, most of those links stopped working.

For approximately an hour, anyone trying to share recently published articles on Twitter was met with an error message clearly intended for developers:

Twitter API bug

(Image credit: Future)

It was almost as if Twitter was informing publishers that they didn't pay their water bill and, as such, couldn't publish links on the social network.

What went wrong?

We didn't have to wait too long for Twitter CEO Elon Musk to explain. In response to a tweet from former Netscape founder and well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen pointing out how four of the five top Twitter trends were about Twitter, Musk tweeted, "A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason. Will ultimately need a complete rewrite."

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This seemingly clear-headed tweet though should be cause for alarm. Musk claims the code stack (basically a massive stack of programs that all work together to create the Twitter whole) is brittle and needs a rewrite. What he fails to mention is that among the thousands of Twitter employees he laid off since November, a good number of them were engineers and, it's safe to assume, some were in what's known as QA or quality assurance.

Typically if you plan on making any kind of code change to a website, online service, or app, QA tests it on an offline copy of the platform. In this way, they ensure that the updates, no matter how small, won't adversely impact the live environment.

The concept is known as "production," the live site or service, versus "staging," an environment that's identical to live but can not be seen or touched by users. You run your new code or feature through staging, a group of QA testers applies a set of known scenarios (maybe they throw in an edge case or two) and as long as there are no red flags, the update gets pushed from Staging to Production. 

Twitter, which has seen its overall reliability drop (from going offline to having features appear and disappear unexpectedly) since Musk took over, may be getting its updates in a different way.

Musk likes to test features on production (the live site). As a result, he keeps running into unintended consequences.

There is some disagreement on whether or not there is a Twitter QA team.

Some argue one exists but Musk grows impatient and then pushes untested code live.

Others insist that Elon Musk arrived at Twitter and discovered that Twitter had no QA team and it was long in the practice of pushing untested code live. That though seems highly unlikely. 

I asked Musk directly on Twitter if the API update was tested on staging before being pushed live and will update this post if he responds.

Never assume

The assumption he made here, that a small API change would have little impact on the site was a poor one. And, yet, Musk still doesn't understand that he's doing it wrong.

Testing features of any kind on a live version of a complex platform like Twitter will inevitably result in bugs and crashes.

Will rewriting the code stack solve all this? Maybe, but very few platforms stay as clean as they were on launch and even if the rewrite is robust and perfect, frequent updates and fresh features will test that stability.

As long as Musk refuses to fully test what he launches before he launches it, there is no scenario in which Twitter escapes regular downtime.

This is a simple fix, Elon, make QA an inescapable part of the development pipeline and save yourself and us a lot of headaches. Or keep doing it your way because that's working out so, so well.



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Best Cheap VPN for March 2023 - CNET

Protect your privacy on a budget with these cheap VPNs.

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New analyst figures have claimed workstation sales saw a considerable boost in 2022, to the point that demand was outstripping supply.

Despite several reports indicating declining PC shipments in 2022, IDC figures claimed workstations saw a healthy boost compared with 2021 suggesting that it was the consumer segment that suffered the most.

In the year just gone, 7.7 million workstations were shipped compared with 7.5 million in 2021, representing a healthy but modest 2.2% growth.

Workstation rise

Dell was responsible for the most amount of sales in 2022, accounting for 41.4% of the shipments and seeing a growth in both market share and overall sales compared with the year before.

HP accounted for 33.7% of the market, down a touch from 2021 to make room for Dell’s considerable growth, while Lenovo made up 24.3% of the market, also down year-over-year. 

The upward trend didn’t continue throughout the year, though, with the final quarter seeing 22.2% fewer workstation shipments than Q4 2021, which IDC reckons is a sign of things to come.

Looking ahead, IDC said it expects global shipments to decline 4.2% year over year in 2023 as the market cools and the focus shifts to inventory clearing and budget discipline.

Contributing to the declines seen toward the end of 2022 and expected for 2023 was the “unsustainable” growth attained over the course of four consecutive quarters from Q3 2021, thus a slowdown even out of the context of global economic pressures was likely to occur.

However, the market intelligence firm predicts that this could be a temporary dip that sees companies refine their focus and increase spending once more, with “solid recoveries” hoped for 2024 and 2025, amid the emergence of new models and a push toward Windows 11.

"We had four consecutive quarters where shipments exceeded two million units from the third quarter of 2021 through the second quarter of 2022," said Jay Chou, research manager, IDC Worldwide Client Devices Tracker. 

"This was well above historical norms and proved unsustainable in the face of tightened budgets and ongoing inflation. After two years of strong purchases, we expect corporate IT to divert away from endpoint devices and we'll likely see 2023 volume shrink 4.2%. This is a slight change from our previous forecast which expected a milder contraction. However, beyond the short-term challenges, we believe new model launches, Windows 11 transition, and other drivers should lead to growth from 2024."



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8 Best Foods That'll Make You Happy - CNET

Nutrition is closely linked to our mental health. These foods can help boost your mood.

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Sunday, March 5, 2023

Latest Gadgets News

WhatsApp has been spotted working on a feature that could let the app silence calls from unknown callers. This feature could help protect users from being contacted by scammers and spam on the platform. Here's everything you need to know about how the feature could work.

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Cryptocurrency exchange Binance developed a plan to avoid US regulatory scrutiny as it started an American entity in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The report is based on messages and documents from 2018 to 2020 reviewed by The Wall Street Journal as well as interviews with former employees.

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Travel Checklist: Do You Pack Your Carry-On the Right Way? - CNET

Learn how to pack a carry-on, which items are essential and which aren't allowed on your flight.

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Best Multipoint Bluetooth Headphones and Earbuds for 2023 - CNET

If you're on the hunt for headphones and earbuds that can be paired simultaneously with two devices, check out these top models that have been reviewed by CNET's experts.

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Best 75-Inch TVs for 2023 - CNET

The best 75-inch TVs prove that bigger is always better.

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Saturday, March 4, 2023

PlayStation Plus Deals: Save Cash on Sony's Gaming Subscription - CNET

We break down how PlayStation's multitiered subscription works and the best ways to get signed up for less.

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Unitree has launched the first known robot app store, which provides canned actions that you can upload or download and add to your robot. ...