Month: January 2022

Enlarge / Amazon fulfillment center in Las Vegas, Nevada. (credit: Getty Images | 4kodiak)

Amazon has killed a program under which it paid warehouse employees to say nice things about the company on social media. “Amazon quietly shut down and removed all traces of the influence campaign at the end of last year, people with direct knowledge of the decision told the Financial Times,” FT reported today. FT noted that the social media program suffered from “poor reach and embarrassing backfires.”

Amazon began paying workers to tweet in 2018 in a widely mocked effort to counter negative perceptions about the company. As Business Insider reported in August 2018, “The company now has a small army of ‘FC Ambassadors’ saying nice things about the company online and engaging in dialogue with average Twitter users. The ambassadors are full-time employees, according to an Amazon spokesperson, and it is their job to share their experiences working at a fulfillment center.”

“FC” stands for fulfillment centers, and the “ambassadors” worked in the Amazon warehouses before being paid to tweet, and in at least some cases, they split duties between the warehouse and Twitter. “I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow,” one Amazon employee explained in 2019, as seen in a Bellingcat report that found 53 Amazon FC Ambassador accounts on Twitter.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

It’s time for another Dealmaster. Our latest roundup of the best deals from around the web includes a decent price drop on Apple’s AirPods Pro, which are currently down to $180 at Amazon and Walmart. That’s about $70 off Apple’s MSRP and about $15 off the average Amazon price we’ve seen for the true wireless noise-canceling earphones over the past few months. For reference, we did see them drop as low as $159 around Black Friday, but this deal matches the best price we’ve tracked for about two months.

We’ve recommended the AirPods Pro a number of times since they launched in late 2019. Though they’re getting up there in age, they continue to provide stronger active noise cancellation than most competing wireless earbuds, an effective ambient sound mode that layers outside noise under your music, and a balanced, neutral sound that still ranks among the best in the category. The ear pieces are light and comfortable and have an IPX4 rating for everyday sweat resistance. Apple now packages the AirPods Pro with a MagSafe Charging Case, an addition it made when it announced the third-gen AirPods last fall. And like all AirPods, the Pro pair brings a number of useful bonus features (“Find My” tracking, “Hey Siri” voice controls, quick device swapping) when used with other Apple devices.

The Pros are far less useful to Android users, to be clear. And at roughly five hours of continuous playback, their battery life is lacking. If you want a similar pair of noise-canceling Apple earphones that are better for working out, the Beats Fit Pro earned a spot on our holiday gift guide last month for packing many of the same benefits into a sportier design. Reports suggest that Apple plans to refresh the AirPods Pro with a new design later this year, too, though those may launch closer to the end of 2022. All that said, if you’re an iPhone user who wants a premium pair of noise-canceling earphones today, this deal is a good value.

Enlarge (credit: Getty)

You can never have enough battery life, but keeping your device’s battery at a constant 100 percent can degrade its life span. Many laptops already use artificial intelligence to control how a device uses its battery, and Chromebooks are now apparently heading down that road as well.

As spotted by 9to5Google this week, a new code change in the Chromium Gerrit references “adaptive charging” coming to Chromebooks. The change’s description says the feature uses machine learning to “minimize the amount of time the device spends at full battery to preserve battery lifetime.”

This system would be similar to features we’ve seen on higher-end Windows laptops. For example, HP’s upcoming Elite Dragonfly 3 laptop will use intelligent charging, which, as the vendor puts it, “learns work patterns to optimize power consumption.” It’s unclear how exactly the developing Chrome OS feature would work, though. It appears that Google will allow the feature to be toggled off, and a notification will let you know when it’s on.

Enlarge / With an image of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell on a screen in the background, Facebook/Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on October 23, 2019, in Washington, DC. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

After years of effort, Meta’s cryptocurrency initiative has collapsed under the weight of regulatory scrutiny.

The Diem Association, formerly known as the Libra Association, is considering selling its assets and returning money to investors, according to a Bloomberg report. There’s not much to sell, though. The company doesn’t have much in the way of physical assets—just some intellectual property. Perhaps the most valuable part of the association is its engineers. Diem is reportedly looking for a “new home” for them.

Mark Zuckerberg first announced the project in 2019, back when his company was named Facebook and the project was named Libra. He said the cryptocurrency would serve as the foundation for payments within Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Zuckerberg managed to convince dozens of companies to become founding members of the backing organization, including Visa, MasterCard, Uber, Lyft, eBay, Spotify, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Enlarge / Maserati’s first mid-engined supercar in nearly two decades strikes a balance between on-track performance and everyday usability. (credit: Cooper Davis for Maserati)

Although the name Maserati is synonymous with exotic performance, the automaker hasn’t unleashed a mid-engined supercar on the world in nearly two decades. In the years since the debut of the limited-production MC12 back in 2004, the company shifted its focus toward sedans and sport-utility vehicles like the Levante to reach a wider audience. Lackadaisical development and a liberal pilfering of the Stellantis parts bin, however, had threatened to dilute the brand.

That all changes with the introduction of the MC20. Developed in Modena, Italy, and built from the ground up on an all-new carbon-fiber monocoque chassis designed to accommodate coupe, convertible, and electric configurations, the MC20 shares very little with the rest of the vehicles in the current Maserati lineup. And thanks in part to its “Nettuno” V6, Maserati’s new 3,300-pound halo car boasts the best power-to-weight ratio in a segment that includes names like Porsche, Lamborghini, and McLaren.

As with the platform, Maserati engineers took a clean-sheet approach when designing MC20’s power plant to create a dry sump engine that’s wholly unique to the brand. The mill uses on-demand twin-combustion technology derived from Formula 1 that places a combustion chamber between the central spark plug and the conventional combustion chamber to improve both performance and efficiency, and the resulting peak output is 621 hp (463 kW) and 538 lb-ft (729 Nm) of torque. Those figures make the engine one of the most power-dense in production today, and that grunt is sent exclusively to the rear wheels through the same Tremec eight-speed dual-clutch transmission used in the C8 Corvette, though it has been dialed in for the requirements of the Maserati V6.