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'Wordle!' Developer Sells App Proceeds to Charity

Andrew Orr ·

The game Wordle has taken the internet by storm recently. But, there’s a similarly-named app named Wordle! and the developer speaks.

Cravotta chalks the sudden increase up to “major publications” failing to specify “that this was an ‘internet browser’ only game, so naturally people went to the App Store to search Wordle.” Even without that, though, the sudden spate of hard-to-parse, link-free tweets promoting the browser game probably got plenty of people assuming it was a reference to a mobile app.

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Hot Cakes Selling Like Microsoft's Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X

Andrew Orr ·

Sales of the Series X and S of the Xbox variety have been wildly popular, a report says recently.

The boss of Xbox discussed the commercial performance of the two consoles on a recent New York Times podcast. The Xbox Series X and S were released 14 months ago on November 10, 2020, and Spencer says that “at this point, we’ve sold more of this generation of Xboxes, which is Xbox Series X and S, than we had any previous version of Xboxes.”

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'TinyML' Wants to Bring Machine Learning to Microcontroller Chips

Andrew Orr ·

TinyML is a joint project between IBM and MIT. It’s a machine learning project capable of running and low-memory and low-power microcontrollers.

[Microcontrollers] have a small CPU, are limited to a few hundred kilobytes of low-power memory (SRAM) and a few megabytes of storage, and don’t have any networking gear. They mostly don’t have a mains electricity source and must run on cell and coin batteries for years. Therefore, fitting deep learning models on MCUs can open the way for many applications.

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Cloud Platform 'Cryptee' Now Warns You of Insecure URLs

Andrew Orr ·

The team behind Cryptee, an end-to-end encrypted platform for documents and photos, announced new features for 2022. One in particular caught my eye.

We’ve improved our URL boxes on mobile. Cryptee can now intelligently detect and warn you if your links are insecure. (i.e. using “http” instead of “https”) All insecure links are automatically highlighted yellow, and all secure links are highlighted green.

Podcast

The One After 909 – Mac Geek Gab 910

Dave Hamilton & John F. Braun · · Add Comment

Listen as your two favorite geeks share tips and tricks about sharing photo libraries, writing Shortcuts, scanning pictures with your iPhone, choosing the best USB or Thunderbolt dock, and more. Press play and enjoy learning at least five new things along with Dave and John in this week’s episode of Mac Geek Gab.

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FTC Oculus Probe Examines Meta for Potential Anticompetitive Practices

Andrew Orr ·

Bloomberg has a report (paywalled link) about an FTC Oculus probe launched recently along with multiple states. A paywall-free summary can be found in the link below.

The agency is seeking to explore how Meta may be using market power in the VR space to stifle competition – in particular whether the Oculus app store might be discriminating against third parties selling apps that compete with Meta’s software. The inquiry also includes a probe into sales practices and pricing for the Quest 2 headset, at $299 notably less expensive than many rival models, according to the report.

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Netflix Price in 2022 Rises For Customers in US, Canada

Andrew Orr ·

Netflix price in 2022 has risen for customers in the U.S and Canada, depending on the plan. This is the first price increase since October 2020.

The standard plan, which allows for two simultaneous streams, now costs $15.49 per month, up from $13.99, in the United States. The U.S. price of Netflix’s premium plan, which enables four streams at a time and streaming in ultra HD, was increased by $2 to $19.99 per month.

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash