Instagram - Page 9 of 25

The next Spider-Man movie will be titled Spider-Man: No Way Home

The next Spider-Man movie starring Tom Holland will be titled Spider-Man: No Way Home. The movie will be out only in theaters on December 17th, 2021.

The announcement was revealed on Twitter on Wednesday.

Holland and co-stars Zendaya and Jacob Batalon teased fans on Tuesday by posting separate joke titles for the movie on Instagram: Holland’s: Spider-Man: Phone Home, Zendaya’s: Spider-Man: Home Slice, and Batalon’s: Spider-Man: Home-Wrecker. While the jokes may have been frustrating, the differing titles may also be hinting at the rumors that the movie will take place in some kind of Spider-Man live-action film multiverse.

There have even been reports that a few fan-favorite characters from past movies are coming back, lending further credence to the multiverse rumors. Alfred Molina will reprise his role as Doctor Octopus (from the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man movies), for example, and Jamie Foxx will be back Electro (from the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies). And Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the time-bending and multiverse-seeing superhero Doctor Strange, is set to appear in the movie as well.

In a recently published Esquire interview, Holland denied that Maguire and Garfield would be appearing in the new movie — but we just don’t know if that’s a clever ruse to hide what would be two mind-melting cameos.

Social networks are finally competitive again

Lately, the consumer internet — that set of products devoted to building and monetizing large networks of people — has started to feel rather buzzy. A space that had been largely emptied out over the past five years is once again humming with life. The products are compelling enough, and growing fast enough, that Facebook and others have begun trying to reverse-engineer and copy them.

It still doesn’t seem quite real to me, and yet everywhere I look the signs are there: social networks are competitive again.

Today, let’s tour this weird new landscape and talk about what it means — and doesn’t mean — for the tech giants and the governments trying to rein them in.

I. How competition ended

If I had to put a date on when competition ended among social networks in the United States, I’d choose August 2nd, 2016. That’s when Instagram introduced its copy of Snapchat stories, blunting the momentum of an upstart challenger and sending a chill through the startup ecosystem.

I don’t think copying features is necessarily anti-competitive — in fact, as I’ll argue below, it’s a sign that the ecosystem is working as intended — but the effect of Facebook’s copying here was dramatic. Snap fell into a long funk, and would-be entrepreneurs and investors got the message: Facebook will seek to acquire or copy any upstart social product, dramatically limiting its odds of breakout success. Investment shrunk accordingly.

The previous year, after the success of Twitter’s Periscope app, Facebook had cloned its live video features, and enthusiasm for both products seemed to broadly peter out. When live group video experienced momentary success under Houseparty, Facebook cloned that too, and Houseparty later sold to Epic Games for an undisclosed sum.

It was in this stagnant environment that many people, myself included, came to believe that it had been a mistake to let Facebook acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. The former became the breakout social network of a younger generation, and the latter cemented Facebook’s global dominance in communication. A world in which both had remained independent would have been much more competitive, even if neither had grown to the scale that they did under Facebook.

This is the basic thesis of the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the company, which it filed in December. The government argues that Facebook “is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct,” and if successful, it could force Facebook to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. It’s a tricky case; as Ben Thompson explains here, the government’s attempt to define the market in which Facebook competes so as to prove it has a monopoly is rather tortured.

You can think the FTC’s case against Facebook is weak and also believe that the period from 2016 to 2021 saw remarkably little innovation among American social networks, at least in terms of the basic user behaviors that they inspire. The market for social products became incredibly concentrated; Facebook and Google built a duopoly in digital advertising; and their vast size and unpredictable effects helped to trigger a global backlash against American tech giants.

If, like me, you think this is all a problem, you could argue for one of two basic approaches to fixing it. The first is government intervention, in the form of an antitrust lawsuit or new regulations from Congress, that would regulate the ability of tech giants to acquire smaller companies or put up new barriers to entering the market or competing on fair terms. The second is to do basically nothing, trusting that the entropic nature of the universe and the inexorable march of time would eventually restore competition.

If the second choice sounds ridiculous, it is not without precedent. In the late 1990s, Microsoft’s dominance over the PC market led the government to pursue an antitrust case over the company’s move to bundle its Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system. The fear was that such bundling would grant Microsoft total power over the consumer PC market forever. In reality, of course, mobile phones were out there just waiting to be perfected, and then Apple came along and did just that, and now no one really worries too much about Microsoft’s power over the PC market.

I do wish the US government had intervened around 2016 to explore new regulations for tech giants’ mergers and acquisitions. In its absence, we could only bet on entropy — and whichever contrarian capitalists still felt like they could challenge Facebook in the market despite its many advantages.

The thing is, though, that a bunch of contrarian capitalists did. And lately they have been having a lot of success.

II. How competition began

Facebook’s biggest competitor in 2021 is, of course, TikTok, which has been siphoning usage from Facebook’s family of apps since it launched in the United States in 2018 (after merging with Musical.ly).

TikTok began by making it dramatically easier for people to make compelling videos, parceled out fame and fortune with a central feed that is incredibly compelling even if you don’t know or follow a single person, and eventually created an entire universe of audio memes, visual effects, and community in-jokes.

Eugene Wei, our best writer and thinker on TikTok, published the third part of his essay series about the app Sunday night. Among the many salient points Wei makes is that the sheer number of forces that have gone into TikTok’s success have made it difficult for Facebook (or YouTube) to clone. He writes:

People will litigate Instagram copying Snapchat’s Stories feature until the end of time, but the fact is that format wasn’t ever going to be some defensible moat. Ephemerality is a clever new dimension on which to vary social media, but it’s easily copiable.

This is why TikTok’s network effects of creativity matter. To clone TikTok, you can’t just copy any single feature. It’s all of that, and not just the features, but how users deploy them and how the resultant videos interact with each other on the FYP feed. It’s replicating all the feedback loops that are built into TikTok’s ecosystem, all of which are interconnected. Maybe you can copy some of the atoms, but the magic lives at the molecular level.

The success of TikTok is a source of real anxiety inside Facebook, where employees ask CEO Mark Zuckerberg a question about it during nearly every all-hands Q&A session. The company has deployed a competitor, called Reels, inside of Instagram, and perhaps it will find a way to succeed. But the larger point is that, whatever the odds, Facebook now has to compete against TiKTok or risk losing the next generation.

You’ve probably already considered that, though. (Unless you’re the FTC, which conspicuously avoided any mention of TikTok in its entire complaint about Facebook’s alleged monopoly position.) But when it comes to mobile short-form video, Facebook and YouTube face a real challenge.

So where else does Facebook suddenly find itself forced to compete?

For starters, there’s audio. While still available only by invitation, Clubhouse recently hit an estimated 10 million downloads. Celebrities including Tiffany Haddish, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Zuckerberg himself have made appearances on the app, granting it a cultural cachet rare in a social startup that is still less than a year old. Clubhouse raised money last month at a valuation of $1 billion — more than Facebook ultimately paid for Instagram.

Because it’s an audio app, Clubhouse doesn’t pose quite the existential threat that TikTok does: you can still theoretically browse Instagram or message businesses on WhatsApp while listening to a Clubhouse chat. But Facebook has been sufficiently intrigued by Clubhouse’s rapid rise that it is now working out how to clone the app, according to a report this month in The New York Times. Elsewhere, Twitter already has a Clubhouse clone, called Spaces, in beta. It’s not clear that Clubhouse poses a threat to either company, exactly. But both are still taking it as a challenge.

What else?

After years of making its most prominent investments in technically challenging media involving video, augmented reality, and virtual reality, Facebook is reportedly taking a second look at text. The rise of Substack over the past year has begun to mint a growing number of millionaire, text-based creators, while also pulling millions of people away from their social feeds into the relative calm of the email inbox. (I have a personal stake in this one, of course; I started a newsletter in large part because my social feeds had come to feel like a lousy place to get my news.)

What’s interesting here is that Facebook now seems open to this possibility, too. Last month, the Times also reported that Facebook is developing newsletter tools for reporters and writers. (I’ve confirmed this with my own sources.) As with Clubhouse, newsletters hardly pose an existential threat to Facebook. But they do bleed time and attention away from the company’s apps — and in a world where news may not be even available on Facebook in some countries, it may be wise for it to have a hedge. (And Twitter clearly thinks so, too: it acquired Substack competitor Revue last month.)

That leaves Facebook competing with legitimately fast-growing, well-funded competitors across several categories. And while it’s in a much earlier stage, I think the company may soon have an interesting competitor in photography as well.

Dispo is an invite-only social photo app with a twist: you can’t see any photos you take with the app until 24 hours after you take them. (The app sends you a push notification to open them every day at 9AM local time: among other things, a nice hack to boost daily usage.) Founded by David Dobrik, one of the world’s most popular YouTubers, Dispo has been around as a basic utility for a year. But last month a beta version launched on iOS with social features including shared photo “rolls,” and it quickly hit the 10,000-person cap on Apple’s TestFlight software. It raised $4 million in seed funding in October, and assuming the buzz continues into a public launch, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dispo took off in a major way.

Audio, video, photos, and text: to some extent, Facebook has never had to stop competing across these dimensions in the company’s history. But I can’t remember the last time it was fighting so many interesting battles at the same time.

III. What it means

Here’s what I’m not saying when I argue that social networks are competitive again:

That Facebook has not acted in various anti-competitive ways throughout its history.
That Facebook should no longer be subject to antitrust scrutiny, or that the US government (and, separately, a coalition of US attorneys general) should abandon their lawsuits.
That, given all this new competition, Facebook should be allowed to purchase rival social networks in the future.
That Facebook won’t remain the world’s largest social network for a long time to come, or that its business will suffer in the short term.

In fact, I think there’s a good case to be made that antitrust pressure from the US government in particular is what has allowed competition to return to social networks in the first place. Had Clubhouse or Substack emerged in 2013 or 2014, it’s not hard to imagine Facebook racing to acquire them and knock them off the chessboard. But in 2021, when Facebook faces a formal antitrust review in the United Kingdom over its acquisition of a failing GIF search engine, the company can only sit back and try to copy what others are doing better.

If that’s the case, it suggests that the half-assed response to Facebook’s growing dominance over the past half-decade nonetheless got us, however belatedly, to a better place. Antitrust pressure made it extremely difficult for the company to make acquisitions, opening a window just big enough for new entrants to climb through. It remains to be seen how big any new challengers to Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter can grow. But for the first time in a long time, I’m optimistic about their chances.

Instagram is adding easier access to support for eating disorders

Instagram is announcing that it’s adding resources for people affected by eating disorders to its social platform. If users search for hashtags or content that’s potentially related to disordered eating, the company will guide that user to resources or help lines provided by the National Eating Disorders Association (or NEDA) in the US, as well as others in the UK, Australia, and Canada.

Instagram says that currently, it tries to blur out potentially triggering content in search results, and it does direct people to generalized crisis support, but it should now direct users to resources specifically designed around eating disorders. In its blog, Instagram also says that it plans to show the resources if someone is trying to share eating disorder-related content, or “if a friend is concerned about something they see posted and wants to offer support.”

This update is similar to what TikTok announced earlier today. However, unlike TikTok, it doesn’t appear as if Instagram pointed to eating disorder-specific resources before, though they were shown in the general list of help lines. Currently, searching for content related to eating disorders will bring you to that general help line list, which not only includes NEDA but the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Veterans Crisis Line, and Trevor Project as well.

Currently, the list doesn’t surface eating disorder help lines, even if that’s the type of content from which the user was directed to it.

However, Instagram’s screenshots imply that the support button will specifically point out the NEDA contacts to people, rather than just showing them the whole list of available help lines.

As part of its National Eating Disorders Awareness Week programing, the company also says it’s planning to work with community leaders to publish Reels that “encourage positive body image, push back against weight stigma and harmful stereotypes, and show that all bodies are worthy and deserve to be celebrated.” According to the post, this is the third time that Instagram has worked on content for NEDA week.

Instagram has had issues in the past trying to regulate eating disorder content, and the social network is often brought up in conversations about negative body image and perception, especially among young people. While the higher resource prioritization likely won’t do much to help with self-esteem issues after using the site, it should help people who are struggling and vulnerable get easier access to help from experts.

United Airlines flight safely lands after dramatic engine failure caught on camera

A United Airlines flight experienced a dramatic-looking engine failure just after takeoff from Denver International Airport on Saturday afternoon. UA328, originally headed to Honolulu, quickly circled back to the airport and made a safe landing after the pilots calmly made a “mayday” call to air traffic control. There were no injuries among the 231 passengers and 10 airline staff on board, according to the FAA.

Since it’s 2021, the incident was thoroughly captured with both photos and video. Passengers shared video of what looks to be a significant right engine failure, with visible damage, flames, and trailing smoke:

That isn’t what I’d want to see looking out the window seat. Engine failures are rare, but do happen. Modern planes are designed so that they’re able to remain in the air for an extended period and safely land with only a single functioning engine.

Photographer Hayden Smith snapped a series of images of the Boeing 777-200 plane that offer a closer look at the damaged engine from the ground and posted them to Dropbox not long after the plane safely landed.

Image: Hayden Smith / speedbird5280 (Instagram)

But even before that, a dash cam managed to get the moment that the engine seemingly blew out.

Reports followed of engine debris landing in neighborhoods near the plane’s flight path, which was also caught on video.

Local authorities are investigating and say that so far there’ve been no injuries related to the shed debris. The plane’s engine cowling is visible in some of the images shared across social media. Nearby residents are being asked to check their property for any pieces of the engine.

A Code Red was sent out to about 1,400 residents around Commons Park, Northmoor and Red Leaf asking them to look for debris in yards.

— Broomfield Police (@BroomfieldPD) February 20, 2021

As is usual in these circumstances, the FAA and NTSB will investigate what went wrong with UA328’s engine. But the incident is another reminder of just how resilient airplanes are designed to be — and how anytime there’s an incident of this magnitude in modern times, it’s going to be captured extensively from nearly every angle within minutes.

I know it’s often mocked when people cheer their airplane touching down safely after a completely normal flight, but in this case, I think I can relate.

25 of the best tracks for testing bass

Everybody loves low frequencies, right? To celebrate all things bass we’ve rounded up a list of some of our favourite test tracks when it comes to the bottom end. Volume isn’t everything, quite the opposite, so expect subtlety and detail, as well as the occasional trouser-flapper.

Whether you’re listening to a stereo system or a decent pair of headphones, you’re in your car or testing a subwoofer, all of these tracks will help when it comes to figuring out how your set-up handles low pitch frequencies. From reggae to rock, classical to dance, there should be something to tickle your fancy, with double bass, bass guitar and serious sub-bass all on show.

You can get a taste for the tracks via YouTube below, or head straight to our Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal playlists where you can find all 25 in one place.

40 of the best 1990s albums to test your speakers

Fat Larry’s Band – Act Like You Know

An instantly recognisable slice of early 80s funk, thanks in no small part to its fat slap of a bass line. Sliding up and down the bottom-end of the frequency spectrum, the plucked bass notes should sound punchy, natural and full of detail. The vocals and keys make for a nice juxtaposition at the other end of the range, too.

View Fat Larry’s Band on Amazon

Like this? Try Gwen McCrae All This Love That I’m Giving

Massive Attack – Angel

A brilliant, brooding bass riff from the Bristolian trip-hop kings. The group aren’t short of songs that could have made this list, but we love the way this slow-burner looms into view, shifting through the gears as the track progresses, the bass note opening up, changing texture and getting louder by the end. A lovely workout for a subwoofer.

View Massive Attack Mezzanine on Amazon

Like this? Try Portishead Numb

Peter Hook’s bass is one of the most recognisable sounds in music. The sound under-pinned Joy Division and New Order (need we go on?), delivering a list of classic hooks as long as this article. Simple but effortlessly effective, this might be our favourite earworm from the New Order arsenal, with the, err, hook, seemingly finding a fresh rhythm and texture with every eight bars.

View New Order Power, Corruption & Lies on Amazon

Like that? Try this Joy Division Love Will Tear Us Apart

Rhythm & Sound – Mango Drive

Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus are the godfathers of dub techno. Better known as Basic Channel, Rhythm & Sound sees them focusing on the dubbier end of the sound. Here, a repetitive sub-bass pattern is filtered slowly and subtly, tweaking the sound enough to keep your ears engaged. Familiar reggae stabs reverberate higher up the frequency range but it’s the bass heft that needs to be clean and assured to keep the track nodding along.

View Rhythm & Sound Mango Drive on Amazon

Like this? Try Global Communication 5 23

Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring

You might need to towel yourself down after this one, such is the power on show. Stravinsky himself referred to the end of this piece as “a noise”, and who are we to argue.

It certainly builds to a cacophony of instruments, with ominous, pounding drums keeping the focus as the rest of the orchestra seemingly battles for supremacy. Angry strings and rasping brass demand power and precision, and probably an apology to your neighbours.

View Stravinsky Rite of Spring on Amazon

Like that? Try Johann Strauss II The Blue Danube

GoGo Penguin – Raven

GoGo Penguin is impossible to pigeon-hole. Marrying jazz riffs, breakbeats and epic melodies, the Manchester band delivers stadium-ready tracks that are at once staggeringly complex and instantly accessible. The bassline on Raven is a rapid, twitching, rollercoaster ride of a double bass blowout, requiring no small level of attention to follow as it dances around a grand piano riff and scattergun drums.

View GoGo Penguin A Humdrum Star on Amazon

Like that? Try Nitin Sawnhey Acquired Dreams

Van Morrison – Moondance

The title track from one of the greatest albums of all time features a textbook walking bassline, complete with live-style improvisation to the melody, sat comfortably in the background. Van the Man’s vocals take centre stage, while saxophone stabs and flourishes on the flute will grab your ear throughout. The bass just ticks over throughout, keeping everything in time. A great check of the overall balance and organisation of your system.

View Van Morrison Moondance on Amazon

Like that? Try Tom Waits Swordfishtrombone

Mala – New Life Baby Paris

Do you want to feel your bass as well as hear it? You’re in the right place. Dubstep referenced garage, drum ‘n’ bass, dub reggae and more to spawn a new sound in the early ’00s. Characterised by scattered drums and sub-bass notes, this is an archetypal track from the early days of the sound from one of its founding fathers, and a great test of rhythm and bass control. Deep bass hits sit beneath synth stabs and lazy drums for a complex rhythm that requires a careful hand, so wish your speakers good luck.

View Mala New Life Baby Paris on Amazon

Like that? Try Skream Midnight Request Line

Miles Davis – So What

One of the key questions a good sound system needs to answer is, do the instruments sound like instruments? If you want to check, this is a great track to use – not least when it comes to the upright bass. Each note has attack, decay, reverb, dynamics and subtle details that the best systems will deliver untainted. Can you hear the size of the room and almost taste the smoke in the air? Your system’s passed this test.

View Miles Davis Kind of Blue on Amazon

Like this? Try Marcus Miller Scoop

The xx – Fantasy

Reverb-laden guitar, minimal drums and weighty bass notes are what The xx do. And they do it very well. If your system doesn’t go low, you simply won’t hear half this track. Provided you’re not listening through a laptop’s speakers, or worse, you can close your eyes and enjoy a couple of minutes of rolling, powerful bass notes, set against a spaced-out guitar riff.

View The xx xx on Amazon

Like this? Try Polica Lately

Ini Kamoze – World-A-Music

You can’t talk about bass without talking about reggae. A much-sampled bassline and track, this Sly and Robbie production is designed to be heard on a sound system that can push some serious air. From the simple-but-effective school, you want to hear solid, rounded bass notes that stop and start cleanly and don’t muddy the midrange. Red Stripe optional.

View Ini Kamoze 16 Vibes on Amazon

Like this? Try Wayne Smith Under Mi Sleng Teng

Rage Against The Machine – Bullet in the Head

Rage Against The Machine’s brand of funk-metal lends itself perfectly to loud, powerful, low-strung bass riffs. This example sees bassist Tim Commerford taking it easy with a workmanlike contribution… before switching it up for a couple of minutes of shredding.

An insightful system will pick out plenty of detail in the neck-breaking finale – you should be able to hear the slap of the strings, not just a wall of noise, especially when the extra layers of guitar come into the mix.

View Rage Against The Machine Rage Against The Machine on Amazon

Like this? Try Korn Here To Stay

Hans Zimmer – Time

There are almost as many layers to this track as there are to Inception, the film in which this track appeared. Hans Zimmer has a hefty back catalogue of stirring soundtracks but when it comes to bass weight and detail, coupled with stirring dynamics for good measure, few do it better than Time.

This should really fill your room and the move from mezzo to forte should be enough to bring a bead of sweat to your forehead – without a firm handle on the vigorous strings, your system’s delivery will fall flat.

View Inception soundtrack on Amazon

Like this? Try Gulstav Holst Mars

Bicep – Aura

“For anyone wondering what the little technical issue was during Aura, the bass was so loud on stage it actually shook the soundcard connection out,” posted Northern Irish duo Bicep on Instagram after a recent live performance.

Loud isn’t everything but there’s no denying there are some beautifully smooth and deep bass rasps on this evocative house track, complete with crisp, contrasting strings. Got a sub? You’ll know if it’s turned up too loud with this one.

View Bicep Bicep on Amazon

Like this? Try Orbital Halcyon

Cream – Badge

Eric Clapton and George Harrison wrote it, Jack Bruce delivered the iconic bassline. Certainly considered one of the greatest bass guitarists of all time, it’s Jack’s nimble, bouncing bass riff that gives this track its energy and drive.

The quick notes will test your system’s dynamics. They should stop and start on time to avoid slowing the song down and ensure the track is nicely balanced and light on its feet, despite the depth and weight of the bass licks.

View Cream Goodbye on Amazon

Like this? Try Fleetwood Mac The Chain

Dead Prez – Hip Hop

One of the most famous basslines in hip-hop, a genre well-endowed with sub-rattling bottom frequencies. The wobbling sub-bass is layered with the catchy mid-303 effect, but it’s that sub bass you want to hear.

It’s an almost non-stop bass assault, so an over-bearing low-end will be all too apparent – a moment’s pause towards the end of the track will give you a quick test of speed and dynamics. Another good track for finding the right level on a sub.

View Dead Prez Let’s Get Free on Amazon

Like this? Try Nas Halftime

Rush – YYZ

Just listen to it.

View Rush Moving Pictures on Amazon

Like this? Try Interpol Evil

The Weeknd – Wasted Times

Adding enough of a twist to the current fashion for ultra-deep but often quite ploddy basslines in RnB and hip-hop, this track delivers bass with weight, definition and texture.

View The Weeknd My Dear Melancholy on Amazon

Like this? Try J Hus Common Sense

Talking Heads – Burning Down The House

A Talking Heads classic driven by a bubbling juggernaut of a bassline.

Inspired by attending a Parliament-Funkadelic concert, Byrne and bassist Tina Weymouth came up with the riff and the vocal hook – ‘Burn down the house!’ had been a popular chant at the gig – during a subsequent funk-infused jam. Those bass notes should sound full and deep without blurring into each other or stifling the overall tempo.

View Talking Heads Speaking In Tongues on Amazon

Like this? Try Gang of Four Not Great Men

Anton Bruckner – Symphony No.7

An hour of huge peaks and troughs that will test dynamics and control, alongside just about every other aspect of your system’s musicality. Tubas and timpanis, double basses and oboes, there’s a huge range of sounds vying for attention, especially at the bottom end of the spectrum. The second and third movements are particularly likely to trouble your bass drivers.

View Bruckner Symphony 7 on Amazon

Like this? Try Mahler Symphony No. 1

Muse – Hysteria

One thing’s for sure, you’re better off listening to this bassline than trying to playing it. Muse favour overdriven, slightly fuzzy bass parts and that roughness around the edges will find out just how insightful your system is. The wall of sound production will have you sitting back in your chair, but hear it at its best and you should be able to discern plenty of detail in the mire. And it should go down pretty low.

View Muse Absolution on Amazon

Like this? Try Metallica For Whom The Bell Tolls

Chic – Good Times

“A bass riff that made HISTORY!”, reads the top comment on this YouTube video. And they’re not wrong. The Wikipedia list of songs that sample this track currently stretches to 27, and it’s labelled as “incomplete”.

Not all famous basslines make for a useful test track but we think this one certainly passes the test. There’s more variation in length and attenuation to notes than you might notice at first listen, which require a little digging out, while some systems just won’t muster the necessary spring and rhythm.

View Chic Risque on Amazon

Like this? Try Stevie Wonder I Wish

James Blake – Limit To Your Love

You might not see it coming but the fragile vocals and simple piano chords of the track’s opening soon give way to a deep, sofa-shaking bass, that rattles around at the bottom of the register and rapidly vibrates just for good measure. Whether your kit can deliver the goods will quickly become apparent.

View James Blake James Blake on Amazon

Like this? Try SBRKT Wildfire

Thundercat – Uh Uh

An unassuming intro gives way to a frantic, two-minute finger workout for Stephen Lee Bruner, aka Thundercat.

As well as working his bass guitar and songwriting magic for the likes of Erykah Badu and Flying Lotus, Thundercat has, to date, delivered three studio albums of genre-bending, jazz-fused funk. Uh Uh is typically freeform and provides a test of timing, rhythm and insight as the bassline runs up and down the musical scale at a fast, erratic pace.

View Thundercat Drunk on Amazon

Like this? Try Cashmere Cat Mirror Maru

Atmospheric, technical drum ‘n’ bass from Photek’s revered debut album. While the genre might now favour noisier, distorted basslines, this track features a more authentic double bass sound, giving the bassline real texture and subtlety.

There’s plenty of weight, too, with complex drum patterns in the top end, so the bass shouldn’t overload the mix. There’s a lovely warmth to the rounded bass notes, which should come across on a good system.

View Photek Modus Operandi on Amazon

Like this? Try Peshay Piano Tune

MORE:

10 of the best songs to test your speakers
10 of the best tracks for testing treble
19 of the best tracks for testing dynamics, rhythm and timing
21 of the best vocal tracks to test your system
50 of the best hi-fi albums for audiophiles
Listen to the What Hi-Fi? playlist

Twitter’s voice DMs arrive in India

Twitter has rolled out support for voice direct messages on iOS and Android in India starting today, the company has announced. Android Central reports that the audio messages are now available in three countries worldwide: India, Brazil, and Japan. Plans for voice DMs were first announced last year. Twitter says the feature, which it’s calling an “experiment,” will roll out in India in phases.

In a statement, Twitter India’s managing director, Manish Maheshwari, said voice messages are designed to “give people a new way to express themselves and help them connect through the nuances, emotion, and empathy built by hearing someone’s voice.” Similar features are already available on other services like Messenger, Instagram DMs, and WhatsApp.

test, test: Starting today, you’ll be able to record and send voice messages in DMs Here’s how

PS. The experiment will be rolled out in phases. pic.twitter.com/aqQM6h9sof

— Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) February 17, 2021

A video released by Twitter India shows how the feature works. Users can start recording using a small icon to the right of the message box, and voice messages can be up to 140 seconds in length. There’s an option to review a voice message before sending it. Although it isn’t possible to send voice messages from the web at the moment, browsers can reportedly still play back the audio clips.

While Twitter has traditionally been a text-based platform, it’s tested a number of audio-centric features over the last year, including audio tweets the company has been testing on iOS as well as Twitter Spaces, which are voice chat rooms similar to what Clubhouse offers. However, Twitter’s audio ambitions faced criticism for their lack of accessibility options. In response, the company announced it was setting up new accessibility teams within the company and that it would be adding automated captions to audio and video on the platform in 2021.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover to star in Amazon’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith series

Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover will star in a new Amazon Prime Video series based on the 2005 film Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The movie starred Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as a pair of married killers-for-hire who are assigned to assassinate each other.

I am trying to envision what Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag character would make of this news and whether her Mrs. Smith will make the asides to the camera that Fleabag was known for (please do). And! This not the first time the two stars have been in the same production; both were in the 2018 Disney movie Solo: A Star Wars Story, he as a young becaped Lando Calrissian and she as snarky droid L3-37.

Glover made the announcement via a story on his Childish Gambino Instagram page, which was shared by Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke. She called the pair a “dream team” for the studio in a statement.

Glover and Waller-Bridge will executive-produce Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Variety reported, and Francesca Sloane will serve as showrunner for the series, which is due in 2022.

Waller-Bridge created and wrote for the hit series Killing Eve based on the novels by Luke Jennings, and is also a writer on the delayed James Bond film No Time to Die. Glover has won raves for his FX series Atlanta, which he created and co-starred in (its latest season has also been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic).

Both stars have done other projects with Amazon Studios; it distributed Fleabag in the US, and Glover’s musical Guava Island was an Amazon Original production.

If Whoopi Goldberg tells you to wear a mask on the subway, you wear it

You might not have to ride public transit to work right now, but if you’re one of the many workers who still commutes in New York City (or if you’re someone like me who fantasizes about their old commute), you’ll now have some new celebrity voice talent to keep you company on your bus or subway ride, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) announced Friday.

Normal transit announcements can easily fade in the back of riders’ minds. They’re either too garbled to be understood or you’ve heard them so many times that they don’t even register. But that might be different if, say, Whoopi Goldberg was the one reminding you to wear a mask on the bus.

At least that’s a theoretical benefit of the MTA’s new announcements rolling out today, created in partnership with director and Instagram star Nicolas Heller (@newyorknico). There are 25 “iconic New Yorkers” set to speak over the intercom on New York City transit, so if Whoopi isn’t your speed, Jerry Seinfeld is reading some announcements, too, as are Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson from Broad City, Edie Falco from The Sopranos, rappers Cam’ron and Jadakiss, and someone who’s been having a bit of a moment lately, Fran Lebowitz.

Getting celebrities to read reminders to wear masks and social distance may not be the best use of the MTA’s resources or time, but according to what Heller told the New York Post, “there was no budget for this.” So whether it’s a charming commute distraction or yet another reason to put in your headphones, at least Awkwafina reminding you to wear a mask didn’t cost taxpayers anything. In fact, the project produced some real gems:

Ey yo check it out it’s Harlem’s own Killa Cam. Look—I don’t care if you from uptown, downtown, Harlem, Switzerland, wherever. I don’t care if you a chicken or a duck. And you know what? Covid don’t care either. Are you wearin’ a mask? Ya, well is it covering your mouth and nose? Then good, you’re doing great. Remember not only wearin’ a mask is the law—it’s the right thing to do.

Chappelle’s Show returns to Netflix now that Dave got paid

Dave Chappelle says that his long running beef with Comedy Central over rights to Chappelle’s Show is over. The surprise announcement came during a 10-minute performance titled Redemption Song posted to Chappelle’s Instagram account late Thursday night. The clip closes with news that the sketch comedy will return to Netflix starting today.

Netflix began airing Chappelle’s Show on November 1st but pulled it on November 24th after the comedian complained that Comedy Central’s owner ViacomCBS licensed the show without his approval. “I called them and I told them that this makes me feel bad. And you want to know what they did,” said Chappelle in a clip posted to Instagram on the morning of November 24th. “They agreed that they would take it off their platform just so I could feel better.” Netflix, which has been airing standup specials from Chappelle since 2016, has a lucrative contract with the performer worth tens of millions of dollars.

Now, three months later, and 15 years after Chappelle famously walked off the show that aired between 2003 and 2006, we have a resolution. According to Chapelle’s telling, Comedy Central reached out to him to make things right.

“I never asked Comedy Central for anything. If you remember I said ‘I’m going to my real boss and I came to you’ because I know where my power lies,” Chappelle said to the Redemption Song audience. “I asked you to stop watching the show and thank god almighty for you, you did. You made that show worthless because without your eyes, it’s nothing. And when you stopped watching it they called me. And I got my name back. And I got my license back, and I got my show back, and they paid me millions of dollars. Thank you very much.”

Chappelle then thanked Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos for his “courage,” and Chris McCarthy of ViacomCBS for “making the past right.”

“Finally after all of these years I can finally say to Comedy Central, ‘it’s been a pleasure doing business with you,’” said Chappelle in closing.

Now, how about a nice game of shirts vs. blouses?

Facebook has doubled bullying and harassment takedowns since last year

On Thursday, Facebook released a new moderation transparency report showing a marked uptick in bullying and harassment enforcement, which reached a peak of 6.3 million total takedowns through the last quarter of 2020. It’s an increase from 3.5 million pieces last quarter and 2.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2019. The company said much of the change is due to improvements in the automated systems that analyze Facebook and Instagram comments.

Facebook’s latest transparency report covers October to December 2020, a period that includes the US presidential election. During that time, the main Facebook network removed more harassment, organized hate and hate speech, and suicide and self-harm content. Instagram saw significant jumps in bullying and self-harm removals. The company says its numbers were shaped by two factors: more human review capacity and improvements in artificial intelligence, especially for non-English posts.

The company also indicates it will lean on automation to address a growing amount of video and audio on its platforms, including a rumored Clubhouse competitor. “We’re investing in technology across all the different sorts of ways that people share,” said CTO Mike Schroepfer on a call with reporters. “We understand audio, video, we understand the content around those things, who shared it, and build a broader picture of what’s happening there.” Facebook hasn’t confirmed the existence of a Clubhouse-like audio platform, but “I think there’s a lot we’re doing here that can apply to these different formats, and we obviously look at how the products are changing and invest ahead of those changes to make sure we have the technological tools we need,” he said.

Facebook pushed some moderation teams back into offices in early October; although it said in November that most moderators worked remotely, it’s also said that some sensitive content can’t be reviewed from home. Now, the company says increased moderation has helped Facebook and Instagram remove more suicide and self-injury posts. Facebook removed 2.5 million pieces of violating content, compared to 1.3 million pieces the preceding quarter, and Instagram removed 3.4 million pieces, up from 1.3 million. That’s comparable to pre-pandemic levels for Facebook, and it’s a significant absolute increase for Instagram.

Facebook bullying and harassment takedowns between Q3 2018 and Q4 2020.

Conversely, Facebook attributes some increases to AI-powered moderation. It removed 6.3 million pieces of bullying and harassing content on Facebook, for instance, which is nearly double the numbers from previous quarters. On Instagram, it removed 5 million pieces of content, up from 2.6 million pieces last quarter and 1.5 million pieces at the end of 2019. Those increases stem from tech that better analyzes comments in the context of the accompanying post.

Non-English language moderation has been a historic weak point for Facebook, and the company says it has improved AI language detection in Arabic, Spanish, and Portuguese, fueling a hate speech takedown increase from 22.1 million to 26.9 million pieces. That’s not as big as the jump Facebook saw in late 2019, however, when it made what it described as dramatic improvements to its automated detection.

Facebook hate speech takedowns between Q4 2017 and Q4 2020.

Facebook says it’s changed its News Feed in ways that reduce the amount of hate speech and violent content people see. A survey of hate speech in the third quarter found that users averaged between 10 and 11 pieces of hate speech for every 10,000 pieces of content; in the fourth quarter, that dropped to seven or eight pieces. The company said it was still formulating responses to some suggestions from the Facebook Oversight Board, which released its first decisions last month.

As it did last quarter, Facebook suggested lawmakers could use its transparency report as the model for a legal framework. Facebook has supported changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a broad liability shield that has come under fire from critics of social media. “We think that regulation would be a very good thing,” said Monika Bickert, VP of content policy.

However, Facebook has not backed a specific legislative proposal — including the SAFE TECH Act, a sweeping rollback proposed in Congress last week. “We remain committed to having this dialogue with everybody in the United States who is working on finding a way forward with regulation,” said Bickert. “We’ve obviously seen a number of proposals in this area, and we’ve seen different focuses from different people on the Hill in terms of what they want to pursue, and we want to make sure that we are part of all those conversations.”

Instagram bans prominent anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, but Facebook page remains active

Facebook-owned Instagram has permanently banned Robert F. Kennedy Jr, a prominent anti-vaccine activist who had over 800,000 followers on the platform, The Wall Street Journal reports. A spokesperson for the service said his account was removed “for repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus or vaccines.” His account on Facebook, however, is still live, with Facebook telling Variety that it has no plan to remove the page “at this time.”

Kennedy has been cited as one of the top spreaders of COVID-19 misinformation by the nonprofit organization Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), the WSJ notes. He also founded Children’s Health Defense, which CCDH calls a leading anti-vaccine charity.

Kennedy’s removal from the platform comes just a few days after Facebook announced it’s stepping up efforts to combat vaccine misinformation on its platforms. Although it banned anti-vaccination ads last October, and started removing vaccine misinformation in December, this week it said it was expanding the list of false COVID-19 and vaccine-related claims it would remove. In particular, it will remove posts that claim COVID-19 is man-made, or that vaccines are dangerous or ineffective.

Children’s Health Defense has previously challenged Facebook’s vaccine fact-checking initiatives. In a lawsuit filed last year, the group claimed that initiatives like fact-checking labels placed on its page created a “falsely disparaging” image of the organization.

Although Kennedy’s Instagram account has been removed, his pages are still live on Facebook and Twitter, with hundreds of thousands of followers between them. On Facebook itself he has over 300,000 followers, with 215,000 followers on Twitter. As of this writing, his most recent posts on both platforms contain links to Children’s Health Defense.

Star Wars severs ties with The Mandalorian star Gina Carano

Disney has severed ties with Gina Carano, who played Cara Dune on The Mandalorian, the company announced on Wednesday evening.

“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson told The Verge.

Carano has recently come under scrutiny for several posts published on social media, including an anti-Semitic post on her Instagram. Some of the content from Carano’s tweets are captured in screenshots, seen below in this tweet. Lucasfilm’s spokesperson denounced Carano’s social media posts, telling The Verge, “her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

This isn’t the first time Carano has been criticized for posts made on social media. In September, she listed her pronouns as “beep / bop / boop” on her Twitter bio, which was condemned for being transphobic. She removed them after a conversation with co-star Pedro Pascal.

Instagram announces tougher consequences for hate speech in direct messages

Instagram is toughening its stance on hate speech in direct messages. The company announced today that it’ll start disabling the accounts of people who repeatedly send hateful messages. First-time offenders won’t be able to send messages for an undefined period of time, but if they send hateful messages again, their account will be disabled.

“We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages,” an Instagram blog post states.

Instagram’s hate speech policy bans attacks on people based on protected characteristics, including race or religion, as well as “more implicit forms of hate speech,” like content depicting blackface and anti-Semitic tropes. Instagram says it also cooperates with law enforcement when necessary to assist in hate speech cases.

This update to hate speech processes stems from a situation in the UK where soccer stars were targeted with racist abuse on Instagram after losing a match. Prince William, who is also the president of England’s Football Association, issued a statement last month saying “racist abuse – whether on the pitch, in the stands, or on social media – is despicable and it must stop now.” Four football clubs also issued a statement against the abuse, and the mayor of Greater Manchester pushed the social networks to step up in helping curb it. This procedural update could dissuade people from sending a terrible message but will also only work if Instagram can continue to quickly disable accounts as they pop up.

Instagram says its algorithm won’t promote Reels that have a TikTok watermark

Instagram’s newest guidance for creators makes one thing clear: the platform wants people to stop posting recycled TikToks to Reels. Today, Instagram says it’s making changes to its algorithm and how it recommends Reels to users. Along with that, it’s issuing new best practices on its @creators account to give Instagram users tips on how to make content that’s likely to be seen and promoted.

The team now recommends that Reels users post vertical videos that use music found in Instagram’s library or sounds that they find on Reels. They also suggest “starting a trend” that others can participate in, like dance crazes, as well as “entertaining” and “fun” content. Reels that are mostly covered by text, are blurry, have a watermark or logo, or have a border around it won’t be recommended as frequently.

“We’re building on what we’ve learned from Explore to recommend fun and entertaining videos in places like the Reels tab, and personalize the experience,” says spokesperson Devi Narasimhan in an email to The Verge. “We are getting better at using ranking signals that help us predict whether people will find a reel entertaining and whether we should recommend it.”

Narasimhan says Instagram user surveys demonstrated that people have a “less satisfying” Reels experience when content is recycled from other apps or is blurry, so it’ll start deemphasizing that content in its recommendation software. This makes it less likely to be discovered by people who aren’t following the person who posted it.

It’s no surprise these recommendations are coming six months after Reels launched in the US. The platform might have been okay with people initially bringing their TikToks over to Instagram, but as it looks to become a popular destination on its own, Instagram needs to make sure Reels isn’t just an advertisement for TikTok, or worse, a place where people just dump whatever content they’ve already made. This might mean more work for creators, however, who will possibly have to shift some of their effort to Reels, rather than focusing on one platform and then distributing the content everywhere else.

Facebook will now take down posts claiming vaccines cause autism

Facebook is expanding what false claims it will remove from its platforms related to COVID-19, COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general starting today. The company began removing debunked COVID-19 claims in December of last year and notifying customers when they had interacted with a post that has false information that same month. But now the list of potential claims that could get a post removed has grown.

Highlights from the new expanded list of false COVID-19 and vaccine-related claims that will be removed include:

COVID-19 is man-made
Vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they were created to protect against
It’s safer to get a disease than to get its vaccine
Vaccines are dangerous, toxic, or cause autism

Facebook says it will start enforcing this policy immediately, focusing on groups, pages, and accounts that share content from its new list of debunked claims. The company also says it would consider removing the sources of the posts entirely if they became repeat offenders.

Notably, the company says that it will only be enforcing this change during the “COVID health emergency,” so while tamping down on such claims could be a major blow to the anti-vaccine movement on Facebook, it might not last long. Even if it remains brief, it’s an important change, Facebook was a major source of vaccine misinformation even before the pandemic and addressing it more directly could have a meaningful impact on people who might have otherwise become anti-vaxxers.

Expanding what counts as COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation is a smart move for Facebook, but some people worry what posts might get caught in the company’s new, larger misinformation net. Studies into the effectiveness of certain masks, vaccines, and tests are still ongoing. As written, Facebook’s new guidelines might prevent conversations around new research results, as UNC Professor Zeynep Tufekci notes.

Looking at the list, Facebook may have to take down some current real news and public health statements, too. We have ongoing clinical trials with no placebo, for example. (UK heterologous prime boost trial) Also today’s reports on ChAdOx1? May need to go under these guidelines. pic.twitter.com/iCCNi6eeBT

— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) February 8, 2021

What’s more, Tufekci points out, recommendations from public health agencies have changed over the course of the pandemic, which may mean that older posts from organizations like the World Health Organization may also be removed. The Verge has contacted Facebook with these concerns and will update if we learn more.

Outside of those policy changes, Facebook is also making adjustments to how factual COVID-19 information gets delivered on Facebook and Instagram. The company will feature links to vaccine information and for signing up to receive a vaccination in its COVID-19 Information Center, and it plans to bring the feature to Instagram as well.

Facebook also says that its continuing to improve search on both platforms to surface more “relevant, authoritative results” when a user searches something related COVID-19, including displaying users who discourage vaccinations lower in search results on Instagram. Finally, Facebook is extending $120 million in ad credits to “help health ministries, NGOs, and UN agencies” spread COVID-19 vaccine information to Facebook’s billions of users.