Amazon’s Clubhouse competitor is here, turning hosts into DJs

After several months of testing, Amazon is opening up access to Amp, its social audio app. Amp shares some DNA with the likes of Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces and Spotify Greenroom, but there’s one thing that sets it apart: the option for hosts to become DJs with tens of millions of licensed songs at their fingertips.

“This limited-access beta will allow us to partner with passionate early adopters in a diverse community of creators, so we can improve the experience and better serve everyone when the app officially launches,” Amp vice-president John Ciancutti said. 

Amp is only available in the US on iOS for the time being, but an Android app is in the works. Users can download Amp from the App Store and sign up for a waitlist. Access codes will also be shared on Amp’s social accounts. 

You’ll need an Amazon account but Amp is free to use. Hosts can bring in callers and will have control over who can speak and when. They’ll be able to schedule shows too.

Amazon has deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and independent labels and publishers to use their music. Hosts can play songs at any time during broadcasts, but there are some limits.

Amazon's Amp social audio app
Amazon

They can play up two songs from the same album or three songs from the same artist in any three-hour window. You can’t repeat songs in that timeframe either. You’ll also need at least one listener before you can start playing songs, so don’t expect to use it as a free ad-hoc music streaming app. Shows can’t primarily be focused on taking song requests and you can’t play any songs from outside the Amp library unless you have the right to do so.

Listeners will be able to follow creators and get notifications when they go live. More features are on the way, including Alexa integration and more search and discovery tools. You’ll be able to listen to shows from high-profile hosts including Nicki Minaj, Pusha T, Travis Barker and Big Boi.

Shows aren’t archived, so you’ll only be able to listen live for now. Hosts won’t be able to generate any revenue from the platform directly as things stand, but Amazon plans to add monetization options later.

Amp’s community guidelines prohibit users from promoting self-harm, calling for violence, supporting terrorism and engaging in hate speech. They are prohibited from, among other things, denying mass tragedies (including the Holocaust and 9/11), having slurs in their usernames and profiles, victim blaming and glorifying hate crimes.

Amazon's Amp social audio app
Amazon

Harmful misleading information and disinformation are banned too. “We believe that science and facts matter. That truth is a matter of safety,” Amp’s website reads. Mature content is allowed to an extent, but it needs to be labeled. Amazon has a moderation team that will look into reports, and, if necessary, suspend or ban users.

Creating a successful social app from scratch is no easy feat, even for companies of this size (remember Google+?). Amazon has another pretty successful platform where creators can engage with their communities in Twitch. However, it didn’t create Twitch — it bought the company in 2014. (As an aside, it’d be nice to see Twitch creators getting access to the same library of licensed music for their streams.)

It remains to be seen whether Amp will take off, particularly given that people aren’t staying at home as much as they were when pandemic stay-at-home measures were broadly in place. However, Amp’s mashup of Clubhouse and Turntable.FM with licensed music could be enough to convince people to try it.

Gogoro unveils the first swappable solid-state EV battery

Solid-state batteries promise a huge upgrade for electric vehicles thanks to higher energy densities and safer designs compared to lithium ion, and Gogoro appears closer to making them a practical reality. The scooter and energy brand has teamed up with ProLogium Technology to reveal what they say is the world’s first swappable solid-state EV battery. The lithium ceramic prototype is compatible with Gogoro’s current scooters, but should deliver a much higher capacity — the two companies are targeting 2.5kWh versus the 1.7kWh of existing hardware.

The design should provide significantly greater range while offering improved safety. Gogoro and ProLogium didn’t estimate what that range might be, but the inherently safer nature of a solid-state battery should reduce the chances of fires compared to ‘conventional’ EVs.

The prototype isn’t just for show. Gogoro and ProLogium expect to produce a “commercial offering” at an unspecified point in the future. That could help Gogoro’s business by expanding the coverage of its scooter network, not to mention lowering the risks for riders. For many, though, availability of technology like this in larger vehicles is the bigger concern — range and weight remain significant obstacles in electric cars, and solid-state batteries could go a long way toward solving those problems.

Samsung may face investigation in Korea over Galaxy S22 performance claims

Samsung may be in legal trouble following worries that it’s throttling app performance. Sources for The Korea Herald claim South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission is “expected” to investigate Samsung over allegations it violated advertising law when marketing the Galaxy S22 phone series. While the company claims the S22 has the “best performance ever,” its Game Optimizing Service limits speed to both preserve battery life and prevent overheating — and you can’t currently override it.

The regulatory crackdown might not be Samsung’s only problem. Yonhap News Agencyclaims Galaxy S22 owners in South Korea are preparing a class action lawsuit against the company for distorting the phone’s capabilities. They feel “cheated” and are asking for 300,000 won (about $243) in compensation per person, according to the news outlet.

Recently, Samsung promised a GOS update that will give users control over throttling. However, the tech firm has denied reports it’s slowing down general apps like Netflix and TikTok, not just games. Some also say it’s removing speed caps for benchmarks like 3DMark and GeekBench, providing an unrealistic view of the Galaxy S22 in synthetic tests.

We’ve asked Samsung for comment. Performance throttling is a common practice for smartphones, as mobile processors can’t always run at full speed for sustained periods. The concern, however, is that Samsung is throttling more aggressively while giving users no say in the matter, much like Apple did during its “batterygate” scandal. There’s no guarantee Samsung will face penalties or do more than release its planned update, but the story is a familiar one so far.

Firefox Focus on Android now includes an HTTPS-only mode

Firefox 98, the latest release of Mozilla’s web browser, introduces a handful of small but handy features. Most notable among them is the addition of an HTTPS-only mode to Firefox Focus on Android. When enabled, the feature protects your online safety and privacy by ensuring you automatically connect to the HTTPS version of a website, even when you manually type HTTP in the address bar or tap on a legacy link.

The update also includes new customization features. Over on the iOS version of Firefox, you can now decide whether you want the search bar to sit at the top or bottom of the screen. For the first time, Mozilla is also introducing mobile wallpapers. Available on both Android and iOS, the first collection celebrates Pixar’s latest movie, Turning Red. Notably, it was created by Melissa Chang, an Asian-American UX designer with Mozilla’s Studios team.

You can download Firefox 98 starting today.

California pilot program turns GM’s EVs into roving battery packs

While not nearly as much of a mess as Texas’ energy infrastructure, California’s power grid has seen its fair share of brownouts, rolling blackouts, and power outages caused by wildfires caused by PG&E. To help mitigate the economic impact of those disruptions, this summer General Motors and Northern California’s energy provider will team up to test out using the automaker’s electric vehicles as roving, backup battery packs for the state’s power grid. 

The pilot program announced by GM CEO Mary Barra on CNBC Tuesday morning is premised on birectional charging technology, wherein power can both flow from the grid to a vehicle (G2V charging) and from a vehicle back to the grid (V2G), allowing the vehicle to act as an on-demand power source. GM plans to offer this capability as part of its Ultium battery platform on more than a million of its EVs by 2025. Currently the Nissan Leaf and the Nissan e-NV200 offer V2G charging, though Volkswagen announced in 2021 that its ID line will offer it later this year and the the Ford F-150 Lightning will as well. 

This summer’s pilot will initially investigate, “the use of bidirectional hardware coupled with software-defined communications protocols that will enable power to flow from a charged EV into a customer’s home, automatically coordinating between the EV, home and PG&E’s electric supply,” according to a statement from the companies. Should the initial tests prove fruitful, the program will expand first to a small group of PG&E customers before scaling up to “larger customer trials” by the end of 2022.

“Imagine a future in which there’s an EV in every garage that functions as a backup power source whenever it’s needed,” GM spokesperson Rick Spina said during a press call on Monday.

“We see this expansion as being the catalyst for what could be the most transformative time for for two industries, both utilities and the auto automotive industry” PG&E spokesperson Aaron August added. “This is a huge shift in the way we’re thinking about electric vehicles, and personal vehicles overall. Really, it’s not just about getting from point A to point B anymore. It’s about getting from point A to point B with the ability to provide power.”

Technically, like from a hardware standpoint, GM vehicles can provide bidirectional charging as they are currently being sold, Spina noted during the call. The current challenge, and what this pilot program is designed to address, is developing the software and UX infrastructure needed to ensure that PG&E customers can easily use the system day-to-day. “The good news there is, it’s nothing different from what’s already industry standard for connectors, software protocols,” August said. “The industry is moving towards ISO 15118-20.”

The length of time that an EV will be able to run the household it’s tethered to will depend on a number of factors — from the size of the vehicle’s battery to the home’s power consumption to the prevailing weather — but August estimates that for an average California home using 20 kWh daily, a fully-charged Chevy Bolt would have enough juice to power the house for around 3 days. This pilot program comes as automakers and utilities alike work out how to most effectively respond to the state’s recent directive banning the sale of internal combustion vehicles starting in 2035.

The Morning After: Android 12L will arrive on tablets and foldables this year

When it announced the Android 12L beta in October, Google promised the software for larger screens would be ready early this year. It’s not here just yet, but the company still expects it to land in 2022. And while we don’t have device specifics, we could see existing devices like the Galaxy Z Fold, Z Flip and Surface Duo pick up the new interface, adding features like home and lock screens optimized for larger displays. 

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Android has long faced criticism for still being an unintuitive system for tablets, leading to a dearth in real competition for Apple’s iPads — Samsung’s efforts aside. But hey, at least with Android 12L, Google is trying to make it better. Are you an unloved Android tablet user who’s intrigued? We tested the Android 12L beta here.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

Samsung confirms hackers compromised its systems and stole Galaxy source code

South American hacking group Lapsus$ previously claimed responsibility.

Samsung confirmed yesterday some of its data was stolen during a cyberattack over the weekend. In a statement to Bloomberg, the company admitted “some source code relating to the operation of Galaxy devices” was taken, but customer and employee credentials were not impacted. Although Samsung has not revealed the actors behind the compromise, South American hacking group Lapsus$ has claimed responsibility. The organization shared a 190GB torrent file that reportedly includes bootloader source code for all of Samsung’s recent devices, as well as code related to biometric authentication and on-device encryption for Galaxy devices.

Continue reading.

Kia’s 2022 Sorento plug-in is no Telluride

But it’s still a posh SUV.

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KIA

Kia’s 2022 Sorento plug-in hybrid (PHEV) is a capable mid-size SUV with some hybrid pep, three rows of seats and a slightly ho-hum aesthetic. It suffers a little from comparisons to the Telluride, Kia’s larger and far more fashionable family SUV. The Sorento is decidedly more basic, but with plenty of charm. Devindra Hardawar test drove it for a bit.

Continue reading.

Cities turn to tech to keep sewers free of fatbergs

These pipe-blocking globs can outweigh an elephant.

It’s a little early to go into too much detail on fatbergs, but once you’ve had your coffee and are fully awake, this is an intriguing insight into how cities are fighting the issue, exacerbated by the boom in wet wipes over the years. Weapons to tackle them include high-pressure water cannons, remote-operated cameras and even sonar tech.

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‘God of War’ might also get a TV series adaptation

‘The Last of Us’ is already on its way.

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Amazon Studios and Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit are in talks to produce a live-action TV series adaptation of God of War, according to Deadline. The outlet reports that Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, best known for their work on The Expanse and Children of Men, are involved in the project.

In case you’re not keeping count, Sony’s recently established PlayStation Productions unit is already working with HBO to produce a TV series based on Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us. It’s also working on a Ghost of Tsushima movie and a Twisted Metal series that will stream on Peacock. There was also that Uncharted movie. Ahem.

Continue reading. 

Google is buying cybersecurity company Mandiant for $5.4 billion

Google has todayannounced that it has signed an agreement to buy Mandiant, a notable cybersecurity company, for $5.4 billion. The unit, once acquired, will be folded into Google’s Cloud team to ensure that it can offer an “end-to-end security operations suite” for its business customers. Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia says that the deal will enable “organizations [to] effectively, efficiently and continuously manage and configure their complex mix of security products.” Google’s cloud platform is used by a number of major companies, and an outage towards the end of 2021 briefly knocked out Spotify, Snapchat, Etsy and Discord, amongst others.

Mandiant isn’t likely to be a name on everyone’s lips, but it’s one of those companies who gets called in whenever bad things go down. It discovered the SolarWinds hack, and it was hired by Equifax to look into its security practices after its massive security snafu in 2017, and T-Mobile entered into partnership with the company after its 2021 breach. It also works with major banks and governments to work on high-profile attacks involving state actors. Mandiant was previously a part of FireEye after being acquired in 2013, but the company was spun back out last year.

The news comes just a month after Bloomberg reported that Microsoft might be interested in acquiring the company. It said that any deal would enable its new buyer to offer “unparalleled cybersecurity knowledge,” although Microsoft — obviously — subsequently pulled out of negotiations. But Google clearly feels that the deal is worth it, and is the second most expensive purchase the company has ever made, after its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola.

Google’s Jigsaw open sources its anti-harassment tool to help protect journalists

Anyone can be harassed online, but it’s an inevitability for activists and journalists covering contentious topics and challenging their country’s authorities — especially if they’re women. Google’s Jigsaw unit has released the open source code for a web app called Harassment Manager that can help them review, sort and export the toxic comments they get on social media. Developers can build on the code to create their own version of the tool, but Jigsaw does have implementation partners, including Thomson Reuters Foundation that’s rolling out a functional web app for its journalists in June.

In its current form, Harassment Manager works on Twitter, which teamed up with Jigsaw for the project. It uses the unit’s Perspective API to detect comments that are most likely to be harmful and allows users to easily document and hide those responses, as well as to mute or block the accounts harassing them. Jigsaw has been training Perspective to detect online harassment since at least 2017 by feeding it comments identified as toxic by human reviewers. 

As The Verge reports, Perspective gives Harassment Manager the power to check the messages a user gets and to sort them into high, possible and unknown levels of harmfulness. The user can then process them in batches instead of dealing with them one by one, and they can blur toxic messages if they don’t want to read them.

According to Jigsaw’s research, 70 percent of female journalists receive threats online, and more than 40 percent of them stopped reporting their story as a result. The unit is hoping that the code can give developers what they need to be able to create a tool to protect people who “deal with disproportionately high toxicity online,” especially “female journalists, activists, politicians and other public figures.” Jigsaw says open sourcing the tool is just a step towards helping people who constantly deal with online harassment. It will continue working with NGOs in the journalism and human rights space to figure out how Harassment Manager’s technology can help keep their communities safe.

AMD vows to fix Ryzen chip stuttering issues on Windows with new update

Have you been noticing random performance stutters, slow loading and other issues on AMD Ryzen-powered Windows 10 or 11 machines? AMD has revealed that they could be caused by issues with the firmware trusted platform modules (fTPMs) located in the BIOS on Ryzen motherboards, TechPowerUp has reported.

Last year, Microsoft announced that TPM 2.0 chips would essentially be required for Windows 11. They serve as a hardware encryption system, authenticating Windows background memory transactions. AMD found that “select AMD Ryzen system configurations may intermittently perform extended fTPM-related memory transactions in SPI flash memory (“SPIROM”) located on the motherboard,” essentially causing your system to stutter until the transaction completes. 

The company announced that it’s working on a fix, and offered an immediate workaround. You can switch from fTPM to a discrete TPM module (dTPM) installed in the dedicated TMP 2.0 header on your motherboard. If you decided to do that, you’ll unfortunately have to pay: they cost somewhere around $50-100 on Amazon, according to TechPowerUp. You’ll also need to be sure to disable Bitlocker before switching between fTPM and dTPM, if it’s enabled. 

The other option is to simply wait for a fix that AMD said will arrive some time in early May. It will be distributed by PC or motherboard vendors and “will require a motherboard system BIOS (sBIOS) update containing enhanced modules for fTPM interaction with SPIROM,” according to AMD.

The fTPM issue is not the first we’ve seen with AMD’s Ryzen chips. Last year, AMD was forced to issue updates for two significant bugs, one of which was slowing popular eSports games by up to 15 percent. 

Itch.io’s $10 bundle with almost 1,000 games will benefit charities helping Ukraine

A charity bundle on Itch.io organized by Necrosoft Games offers a collection of 991 indie games, soundtracks, books, comics, tabletop RPGs and gaming tools for a minimum of donation of $10 — and all proceeds will go to organizations helping relief efforts in Ukraine. The bundle includes games like Baba is You, 2064 Read Only Memories, Celeste, Skatebird and Towerfall Ascension. It also includes text message adventure game Bury Me My Love, which tells the story of a Syrian refugee couple, and military RPG Long Gone Days that focuses on the human cost of war.

Necrosoft only added paid products to the bunch, and 600 of them have never been in a major bundle before. In all, the items in the bundle cost around $6,500 when you add up their regular retail prices. Everything the developer gets after card processing fees will go to two charity organizations in particular, one of which is the International Medical Corps. It’s a humanitarian nonprofit that’s currently working in Ukraine to increase access to medical services, including mental health support, and to help contain the spread of COVID-19. The other beneficiary is the Ukrainian organization Voices of Children, which sets up shelters and helps children cope with the horrors of war. 

While Necrosoft is only asking for a minimum of $10 for all 991 items, it’s urging donors to pay more if they can. The company is hoping to raise $1 million for the causes it supports until March 17th.