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Weekly Tech Recap: iPhone 15 series hit stores, OnePlus Open announced, Zuckerberg introduces WhatsApp Flows, more

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For representation purposes (AFP)

The world of technology was taken by storm this week, since Apple’s latest iPhone 15 Series have reached the stores in India and across the world. Fans waited in long queues outside the Apple stores to purchase their favourite Apple devices. 

Moreover, in another major development Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the WhatsApp Flows, a new feature for businesses to change the way they engage with users through the chat. Here is a quick recap for you:

Apple iPhone 15 Series goes on sale; loyalists stood in long queues to get their devices

Apple’s iPhone 15 range launched in India with eager customers queuing up outside official stores in Delhi and Mumbai. Rahul, the first customer at Apple Saket, arrived at 4 am to buy the iPhone 15 Pro Max, expressing excitement about being among the first to own it. Similarly, Vivek from Bangalore was thrilled to get his iPhone 15 Pro despite not being first in line.

OnePlus Open foldable smartphone announced officially

OnePlus is set to release its first foldable smartphone, namely OnePlus Open, reportedly on October 19. The device is rumored to feature a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. While the official product name and details are pending confirmation, OnePlus announced the launch during the TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 event, promising more information through official channels. Renowned tipster Max Jambor also suggests the same launch date.

Mark Zuckerberg announces WhatsApp Flows and Meta Verified for Businesses

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, unveiled groundbreaking features at the Conversations conference in Mumbai for WhatsApp Business. The key highlight is “WhatsApp Flows,” enabling tailored in-chat interactions, from scheduling bank appointments to food orders and flight check-ins. Meta is expanding payment capabilities to India, offering various payment methods. Additionally, Meta Verified will ensure the authenticity of businesses on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, offering verified badges, support, and protection from impersonation.

Flipkart Big Billion Days Sale 2023 announced

Flipkart is gearing up for its Big Billion Days Sale 2023, offering a sneak peek of discounts for ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, and Kotak Bank card users. Paytm also guarantees savings for transactions. The sale features no-cost monthly installments, discounts for old item exchanges, and a “Pay Later” option. Key smartphone deals will be revealed on specific dates in October. Expect significant discounts on popular brands like Apple, Samsung, Google, Realme, Oppo, Xiaomi, Nothing, and Vivo, with teased discounts of up to 80 percent on select models like Moto G54 5G and Samsung Galaxy F34 5G.

Vivo T2 Pro 5G launched in India

Vivo has launched its new 5G smartphone, the Vivo T2 Pro 5G, in India. It features a MediaTek Dimensity 7200 chipset, a 6.78-inch 120Hz AMOLED display, and a 4,600mAh battery with 66W fast charging. The base model with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage is priced at Rs. 23,999, while the top-end variant with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage is Rs. 24,999. Discounts are available for ICICI and Axis bank card users. The phone boasts a high AnTuTu benchmark score and includes a vapor chamber liquid cooling system for gaming. The camera setup includes a 64MP main sensor and a 16MP selfie camera.

PhonePe launches Indus Appstore Developer platform for “Made-in-India” apps

PhonePe has launched the Indus Appstore Developer Platform, inviting Android app developers to list their apps on the Indian appstore. It offers a localised experience in 12 languages, no platform fees or commissions for In-App Payments, and tools like “Launch Pad” for startups. The platform aims to serve as an alternative distribution channel for Android developers targeting the Indian market, catering to local needs.

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Updated: 23 Sep 2023, 07:14 PM IST

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Individual + Team Stats: Hornets vs. Timberwolves

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CHARLOTTE HORNETS MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES You can follow us for future coverage by liking us on Facebook & following us on X: Facebook – All Hornets X – …

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What went wrong with ‘the Metaverse’? An insider’s postmortem

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What went wrong with 'the Metaverse'? An insider's postmortem


It’s now two years since Facebook changed its name to Meta, ushering in a brief but blazing enthusiasm over “the Metaverse”, a concept from science fiction that suddenly seemed to be the next inevitable leap in technology. For most people in tech, however, the term has since lost its luster, seemingly supplanted by any product with “artificial intelligence” attached to its description. 

But the true story of the Metaverse’s rise and fall in public awareness is much more complicated and interesting than simply being the short life cycle of a buzzword — it also reflects a collective failure of both imagination and understanding.  

Consider:

The forgotten novel

Ironically, many tech reporters discounted or even ignored the profound influence of Snow Crash on actual working technologists. The founders of Roblox and Epic (creator of Fortnite) among many other developers were directly inspired by the novel. Despite that, Neal Stephenson’s classic cyberpunk tale has often been depicted as if it were an obscure dystopian tome which merely coined the term. As opposed to what it actually did: describe the concept with a biblical specificity that thousands of developers have referenced in their virtual world projects — many of which have already become extremely popular.

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Snow Crash.

You can see this lack of clarity in many of the mass tech headlines attempting to describe the Metaverse in the wake of Facebook’s name change: 

In a widely shared “obituary” to the Metaverse, Business Insider’s Ed Zitron even compounded the confusion still further by inexplicably misattributing the concept to TRON, the original Disney movie from the 80s.

Had the media referenced Snow Crash far more accurately when the buzz began, they’d come away with a much better understanding of why so many technologists are excited by the Metaverse concept — and realize its early incarnation is already gaining strong user traction.  

Because in the book, the Metaverse is a vast, immersive virtual world that’s simultaneously accessible by millions of people through highly customizable avatars and powerful experience creation tools that are integrated with the offline world through its virtual economy and external technology. In other words, it’s more or less like Roblox and Fortnite — platforms with many tens of millions of active users. 

But then again, the tech media can’t be fully blamed for following Mark Zuckerberg’s lead.

Rather than create a vision for its Metaverse iterating on already successful platforms — Roblox’s 2020 IPO filing even describes itself as the metaverse — Meta’s executive leadership cobbled together a mishmash of disparate products. Most of which, such as remotely working in VR headsets, remain far from proven. According to an internal Blind survey, a majority of Zuckerberg’s own employees say he has not adequately explained what he means by the Metaverse even to them.

Grievous of all, Zuckerberg and his CTO Andrew Bosworth promoted a conception of the Metaverse in which the Quest headset was central. To do so, they had to overlook compelling evidence — raised by senior Microsoft researcher danah boyd at the time of the company acquiring Oculus in 2014 — that females have a high propensity to get nauseous using VR.

Meta Quest 3 comes out on October 10 for $500.
Meta Quest 3.

Contacted in late 2022 while writing Making a Metaverse That Matters, danah told me no one at Oculus or Meta followed up with her about the research questions she raised. Over the years, I have asked several senior Meta staffers (past and present) about this and have yet to receive an adequate reply. Unsurprisingly, Meta’s Quest 2 VR headset has an estimated install base of only about 20 million units, significantly smaller than the customer count of leading video game consoles. A product that tends to make half the population puke is not exactly destined for the mass market — let alone a reliable base for building the Metaverse. 

Ironically, Neal Stephenson himself has frequently insisted that virtual reality is absolutely not a prerequisite for the Metaverse, since flat screens display immersive virtual worlds just fine. But here again, the tech media instead ratified Meta’s flawed VR-centric vision by constantly illustrating articles about the Metaverse with photos of people happily donning headsets to access it — inadvertently setting up a straw man destined to soon go ablaze.

Duct-taped to yet another buzzword

Further sealing the Metaverse hype wave’s fate, it crested around the same time that Web3 and crypto were still enjoying their own euphoria period. This inevitably spawned the “cryptoverse” with platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox. When the crypto crash came, it was easy to assume the Metaverse was also part of that fall.

But the cryptoverse platforms failed in the same way that other crypto schemes have gone awry: By offering a virtual world as a speculative opportunity, it primarily attracted crypto speculators, not virtual world enthusiasts. By October of 2022, Decentraland was only tracking 7,000 daily active users, game industry analyst Lars Doucet informed me

“Everybody who is still playing is basically just playing poker,” as Lars put it. “This seems to be a kind of recurring trend in dead-end crypto projects. Kind of an eerie rhyme with left-behind American cities where drugs come in and anyone who is left is strung out at a slot machine parlor or liquor store.”

All this occurred as the rise of generative AI birthed another, shinier buzzword — one that people not well-versed in immersive virtual worlds could better understand.

But as “the Metaverse” receded as a hype totem, a hilarious thing happened: Actual metaverse platforms continued growing. Roblox now counts over 300 million monthly active users, making its population nearly the size of the entire United States; Fortnite had its best usage day in 6 years. Meta continues plodding along but seems to finally be learning from its mistakes — for instance, launching a mobile version of its metaverse platform Horizon Worlds.  

Roblox leads the rise of user-generated content.
Roblox.

Into this mix, a new wave of metaverse platforms is preparing to launch, refreshingly led by seasoned, successful game developers: Raph Koster with Playable Worlds, Jenova Chen with his early, successful forays into metaverse experiences, and Everywhere, a metaverse platform lead developed by a veteran of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

At some point, everyone in tech who co-signed the “death” of the Metaverse may notice this sustained growth. By then however, the term may no longer require much usage, just as the term “information superhighway” fell away as broadband Internet went mainstream.  

Wagner James Au is author of Making a Metaverse That Matters: From Snow Crash & Second Life to A Virtual World Worth Fighting For 

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Social media blocks are “a suppression of an essential avenue for transparency”

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In this photo illustration the word censored is seen displayed on a smartphone with the logos of social networks Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube in the background.

Once praised as the defining feature of the internet, the ability to connect with physically distant people is something that governments have recently been seemingly intent on restricting. Authorities have been increasingly pulling the plug, putting over 4 billion people in the shadows in the first half of 2023 alone

Social media platforms are often the first means of communication to be restricted. Surfshark, one of the most popular VPN services, counted at least 50 countries guilty of having curbed these websites and apps during periods of political turmoil such as protests, elections, or military activity.

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