hightechz.net

1700 Posts
Whoop backpedals on its paid upgrade whoops
10 May

Whoop backpedals on its paid upgrade whoops

hightechz.net0 CommentsProducts
A shot of the Whoop 4.0 from our 2022 review. Whoop is in damage control mode. After debuting its Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker, users were angered to find it had reneged on a promise of free hardware upgrades. In a new Reddit post, the company now says users who have been members for over 12 months can get the Whoop 5.0 for free. Part of the outrage was prompted by Whoop’s confusing messaging. Early yesterday morning, my colleague Victoria Song reported that to get a Whoop 5.0 band, users would need to extend their existing membership by an additional 12…
Read More
SoundCloud says it isn’t using your music to train generative AI tools
10 May

SoundCloud says it isn’t using your music to train generative AI tools

hightechz.net0 CommentsAI
The music-sharing platform SoundCloud quietly updated its terms of use in February last year, adding language that lets it train AI models on its users’ content, as TechCrunch reported. And while the company says it hasn’t used user-created content for model training, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that it will in the future. Marni Greenberg, SVP and head of communications at SoundCloud, provided the following in a statement emailed to The Verge. SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from…
Read More
The enduring cool of skateboarding games
10 May

The enduring cool of skateboarding games

hightechz.net0 CommentsProducts
More than 25 years after the first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater put skateboarding games on the map, developers are still finding new ways to explore skating in video games, especially in 2025. Skateboarding fans are about to have some promising new games to play, with Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 remake releasing in July and EA is set to launch its online-only, free-to-play Skate revival this year. In 2022, my colleague Andrew Webster wrote that we're in a golden age for skateboarding games, and things haven't really slowed down. So what is it that makes skateboarding so…
Read More
Donald Trump takes aim at more water and energy efficiency standards
10 May

Donald Trump takes aim at more water and energy efficiency standards

hightechz.net0 CommentsEnergy & Green Tech
Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum Friday afternoon directing the Department of Energy to “consider using all lawful authority to rescind” or weaken regulations for water and energy efficiency for dishwashers and washing machines. The action also includes water use standards for showers, faucets, toilets, and urinals. It closes out a week of attacks on policies meant to save Americans money by incentivizing manufacturers to make products that save water and energy. Earlier in the week, CNN and E&E News reported that the Trump administration would shutter the Energy Star program as part of a “reorganization” planned at the Environmental…
Read More
Google will pay a $1.375 billion settlement to Texas over privacy violations
10 May

Google will pay a $1.375 billion settlement to Texas over privacy violations

hightechz.net0 CommentsBusiness
Google is set to pay $1.375 billion to settle claims of data privacy violations brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, according to a press release. Texas filed two lawsuits in 2022 against Google for “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ private data regarding geolocation, incognito searches, and biometric data,” the release says. Before now, no single state has “attained a settlement against Google for similar data-privacy violations greater than $93 million.” “This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda tells The…
Read More
Deltarune’s next chapters will launch alongside the Switch 2
09 May

Deltarune’s next chapters will launch alongside the Switch 2

hightechz.net0 CommentsProducts
The paid release of Deltarune, Toby Fox’s episodic Undertale spinoff, will be available for most people at the same time the Nintendo Switch 2 launches in Japan, Fox says in the Deltarune newsletter for May 2025. Deltarune’s first two chapters, released in 2018 and 2021 respectively, were free, but this new release, which adds chapters 3 and 4, will be a paid version that costs $24.99.  How the release timing will work is a little confusing, but let me explain. For PS4, PS5, Steam, and the original Switch, Deltarune will launch on June 5th at 12AM in Japan, which translates…
Read More
You can now use Apple Pay to buy games on your PS5
09 May

You can now use Apple Pay to buy games on your PS5

hightechz.net0 CommentsProducts
PS5 users can now buy games in the PlayStation Store using a new payment method: Apple Pay. You could use Apple Pay in the browser or via the mobile app already, but now the method joins other on-console options like using a saved credit or debit card, and PayPal. As reported by 9to5Mac, you may now see a new option for Apple Pay available at checkout. It’s using the QR code-style method that Apple introduced on iOS 18 last year, and also lets you buy things on third-party browsers like Chrome. The PlayStation support page for using Apple Pay has…
Read More
Figma’s CEO on his new approach to AI
09 May

Figma’s CEO on his new approach to AI

hightechz.net0 CommentsAI
Tech event season is in full swing. This week, Stripe and Figma gathered thousands of people in downtown San Francisco for their respective conferences. I caught up with Figma CEO Dylan Field after his opening keynote at Config, where he announced the most significant product expansion in the company's history. Below, you'll find our chat about how he sees AI fitting into Figma after a rough start to integrating the technology last year, the new areas he's targeting to grow the platform, and more. And keep reading for how Meta is turning up the heat on its AI team, my…
Read More
Netflix is removing Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
09 May

Netflix is removing Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

hightechz.net0 CommentsBusiness
Netflix is removing the last two shows listed on its Interactive Specials page: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, reports What’s on Netflix. The two specials will be pulled on May 12th, 2025, according to the publication, so if you want to watch them, you’ll want to catch them soon. Bandersnatch wasn’t Netflix’s first interactive special, but it was arguably the platform’s most famous. It was a dark, choose-your-own-adventure-style movie, and after it launched, Reddit detectives immediately went to work to decode the many choices throughout the film. (Though it didn’t work on every device…
Read More
Instagram CEO testifies about competing with TikTok: ‘You’re either growing, or you’re slowly dying’
08 May

Instagram CEO testifies about competing with TikTok: ‘You’re either growing, or you’re slowly dying’

hightechz.net0 CommentsBusiness
When Adam Mosseri took over Meta-owned Instagram as CEO in 2018, the app was experiencing what he'd later call "concerning" drops and plateaus in user engagement, thanks partly to fierce competition from a new app: TikTok. Instagram estimated in 2019 that 23 percent of the decline in time spent on Instagram in the US was due to TikTok. Bytedance's video app kept expanding through the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. "We can't explain it all, but what's clear at this point is that we need to adapt, and do so quickly," Mosseri wrote to his team in March 2020. Instagram…
Read More
Like Us
Follow Us
Subscribe Us
Follow Us