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(NEW YORK) — Twitter blocked a post Sunday from an adviser to President Donald Trump who suggested that masks do not work to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Scott Atlas, who joined the White House in August as a science adviser, had tweeted “Masks work? NO,” and said widespread use of masks is not supported.
The tweet violated a Twitter policy that prohibits sharing false or misleading misinformation about COVID-19 that could lead to harm, a company spokesperson said. The policy bans statements that have been confirmed to be false or misleading by experts such as public health authorities.
In such cases, Twitter disables the account until its owner deletes the post in question.
Trump has downplayed the importance of masks in reducing the spread of the virus, even after he contracted the disease, which has killed more than 215,000 Americans.
“I don’t understand why the tweets were deleted,” Atlas said in an email, calling Twitter’s actions censorship. He said his tweet was intended to show that “general population masks and mask mandates do not work,” and he clarified that the correct policy is to use masks when one cannot socially distance. Atlas added that infections exploded even with mandates in Los Angeles County, Miami-Dade County, Hawaii, Alabama, the Philippines, Japan and other places.
Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, has no expertise in public health or infectious diseases. He has criticized the coronavirus lockdowns and campaigned for children to return to classrooms. Some scientists view Atlas as promoting dangerous theories around “herd immunity.”
Last week, Twitter and Facebook moved quickly to limit the spread of an unverified political story published by the conservative-leaning New York Post. The story cited unverified emails from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, and it has not been confirmed by other publications. There have been no new tweets from the Post since Oct. 14, indicating Twitter may still be blocking the newspaper’s tweets.
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Associated Press Writer Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump’s ban on TikTok was temporarily blocked by a federal judge, dealing a blow to the government in its showdown with the popular Chinese-owned app it says threatens national security.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols granted a preliminary injunction against the ban on the widely used video-sharing network after an unusual Sunday morning hearing. The judge refused to grant an injunction against a November deadline for a sale. TikTok’s owner, ByteDance Ltd., had requested the hold after the president ordered TikTok out of American app stores unless the company sold a stake in its U.S. operations to a domestic buyer.
The ban, scheduled to go into effect at 11:59 p.m. in New York, would have removed TikTok from the app stores run by Apple and Google’s Android, the most widely used marketplaces for downloadable apps. People who don’t yet have the app wouldn’t be able to get it, and those who already have it wouldn’t have access to updates needed to ensure its safe and smooth operation. TikTok is used regularly by 19 million Americans.
ByteDance is fighting the Trump administration in court even as it pursues its approval for the sale of a stake in the U.S. business to Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc. Trump has called for bans on both TikTok and WeChat, owned by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd., arguing that the apps could give China’s government access to millions of Americans’ personal data. The bans are part of an increasingly hard line he has taken on Beijing as the election approaches.
Even as the sale of TikTok is still awaiting final U.S. approvals, two of China’s most prominent state-backed media mouthpieces last week denounced the deal.
“What the United States has done to TikTok is almost the same as a gangster forcing an unreasonable and unfair business deal on a legitimate company,” the state-run China Daily wrote in a Wednesday opinion piece. Hu Xijin, the influential editor-in-chief of the Party-run Global Times, tweeted that Beijing likely wouldn’t approve the current agreement as it endangered China’s national security.
A lawyer for TikTok told the judge at Sunday’s virtual hearing that the ban was irrational given that ByteDance is in talks to strike a deal the president himself has demanded.
“How does it make sense to impose this app-store ban tonight when there are negotiations underway that might make it unnecessary?” attorney John Hall asked.
Hall said banning TikTok from U.S. app stores would undermine security by preventing existing users from receiving weekly security updates. He argued that the government has less burdensome alternatives, such as the stake sale, to achieve its national-security aims. ByteDance says Trump is exceeding his authority with the ban.
“The consequences immediately are grave,” Hall told the judge. “It would be no different than the government locking the doors to a public forum, roping off that town square.”
His language echoed the ruling of a judge in California who put a hold on Trump’s WeChat ban last week, citing its effect on free speech and the irreparable harm that the ban would cause to the business.
Daniel Schwei, a lawyer for the Justice Department, countered that “the concern here is about data security risk and leaving data vulnerable to the Chinese government. It is a threat today, it is a risk today, and therefore it deserves to be addressed today.” The U.S. government decided last week to extend its deadline to allow for more sale discussions.
In a filing on Friday, the U.S. cited FBI Director Christopher Wray’s assessment that China poses the “greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property.”
TikTok is “challenging a national security determination by the president as well as the judgment of the secretary of commerce about what’s necessary to mitigate those national security harms,” Schwei told the judge. “And I think the court owes significant deference to that.”
In a separate case, a federal judge in Pennsylvania on Saturday rejected a request by TikTok users to halt the ban, saying the consequences of the ban wouldn’t be severe enough for the users to justify an injunction temporarily blocking the order while the litigation continues.
The case is TikTok Inc. v. Trump, 20-cv-2658, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
(NEW YORK) — Microsoft confirmed Sunday it is in talks with Chinese company ByteDance to acquire the U.S. arm of its popular video app TikTok and has discussed with President Donald Trump his concerns about security and censorship surrounding such an acquisition.
In a statement, Microsoft said Microsoft and ByteDance have provided notice of their intent to explore a deal resulting in Microsoft owning and operating the TikTok service in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The company said it expects those talks to conclude by Sept. 15.
Trump said on Friday that he would soon ban TikTok in the United States. Trump and CEO Satya Nadella have spoken, the company said, and Microsoft was prepared to continue exploring the purchase of TikTok’s U.S. operations after their conversation.
“Microsoft fully appreciates the importance of addressing the President’s concerns. It is committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a complete security review and providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury,” the Microsoft statement said.
The White House did not immediately comment on the Microsoft statement.
Previously, there were reports that Microsoft was in advanced talks to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, which has been a source of national security and censorship concerns for the Trump administration. Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo again raised the administration’s warnings about social media platform.
“These Chinese software companies doing business in the United States, whether it’s TikTok or WeChat — there are countless more … are feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party, their national security apparatus,” Pompeo said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“Could be their facial recognition patterns. It could be information about their residence, their phone numbers, their friends, who they’re connected to. Those — those are the issues that President Trump has made clear we’re going to take care of,” Pompeo said.
In its statement, Microsoft said it may invite other American investors to participate on a minority basis in the purchase of TikTok. Financial terms were undisclosed.
TikTok’s U.S. user data is stored in the U.S., with strict controls on employee access, and its biggest investors come from the U.S., the company said earlier Sunday. “We are committed to protecting our users’ privacy and safety as we continue working to bring joy to families and meaningful careers to those who create on our platform,” a TikTok spokesperson said.
A federal committee has been reviewing whether Trump could ban TikTok in the U.S. Its members agree that TikTok cannot remain in the U.S. in its current form because it “risks sending back information on 100 million Americans,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
“We all agree there has to be a change … everybody agrees it can’t exist as it does,” Mnuchin said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
As speculation grew over a ban or sale of the social media platform’s U.S. business, TikTok posted a video on Saturday saying, “We’re not planning on going anywhere.”
TikTok’s catchy videos and ease of use has made it popular, and it says it has tens of millions of users in the U.S. and hundreds of millions globally. Its parent company, Bytedance Ltd., launched TikTok in 2017. It bought Musical.ly, a video service popular with teens in the U.S. and Europe, and combined the two. It has a similar service, Douyin, for users in China.
But TikTok’s Chinese ownership has raised concern about the potential for sharing user data with Chinese officials as well as censorship of videos critical of the Chinese government. TikTok says it does not censor videos and it would not give the Chinese government access to U.S. user data.
“The President, when he makes his decision, will make sure that everything we have done drives us as close to zero risk for the American people,” Pompeo said. “That’s the mission set that he laid out for all of us when we get — we began to evaluate this now several months back. We’re closing in on a solution. And I think you will see the president’s announcement shortly.”
The debate over TikTok parallels a broader U.S. security crackdown on Chinese companies, including telecom providers Huawei and ZTE. The Trump administration has ordered that the U.S. stop buying equipment from those providers to be used in U.S. networks. Trump has also tried to steer allies away from Huawei over concerns that the Chinese government has access to its data, which Huawei denies.
Electronics giant Sony has finally taken the lid off its much-anticipated successor to the popular PlayStation 4 game console.
On Thursday, the company showed off a sneak peak at its upcoming lineup of titles for its next-generation PlayStation 5 (PS5) console, along with a look at the console itself and some accessories.
“Today’s the day we’ve been looking forward to for years, when we get to show you just some of the games that demonstrate our belief that PlayStation 5 marks the biggest generational transition our industry has yet seen,” said Jim Ryan, president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, at the start of the company’s streamed event. Surprising basically everyone, the new console cuts a distinctive figure when it comes to industrial design, making competition like Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox Series X and its gray boxy aesthetic look downright bland.
Sony’s stream began with a showcase of upcoming PlayStation 5 titles from classic Sony franchises likeGran Turismo 7,Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart,Horizon: Forbidden West, andMarvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, appeasing longtime fans with familiar versions of popular characters. Among its new titles, games like the surreal and stylized adventure gameSolar Ash, time-shifting shooterReturnal, and knight-heavy fighting gameGodfallshow off the console’s graphical fidelity, but only offered glimpses of gameplay that made it difficult to discern just how much a graphical leap it is from its PlayStation 4 predecessor.
The star of the show, the console itself, diverges from Sony’s previous understated designs and goes for broke in the looks department. Its white and black color scheme features sweeping curves on either side, with exhaust cutouts hidden on the interior of the white shell encasing its body, which features both USB-A and USB-C ports. On the right side of the console (or bottom, depending on orientation) is the Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive. While shown standing vertically, the console can also be placed horizontally, a feature found in past Sony consoles beginning with the PlayStation 2.
Sony
In a nod to gaming’s eventual disc-free future, Sony also revealed a nearly identical PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, which omits the disc drive, giving the console a slimmer profile compared to its counterpart.
Inside the PS5 is custom-designed hardware powered by processor and graphics card company AMD, along with an internal solid-state drive (SSD) for faster load times and seamless transitions that Sony says will allow games to take up less space despite using 100GB Blu-ray discs to store physical versions of the games. While offering faster read and write times than the current hard disk drives used in consoles today, solid state drives are still relatively expensive at larger sizes, meaning increased storage capacity could be quite costly, a problem many console users run into as they amass a greater library of titles installed on their device.
“While there are some slight differences in the look of each model, for the overall design, we wanted to deliver a console that’s bold, stunning, and unlike any previous generation of PlayStation,” the company wrote in its hardware reveal trailer.
Sony also revealed an extensive array of accessories for the console, including the HD Camera, the DualSense Charging Station, which can charge two PlayStation 5 DualSense controllers at once, its Pulse 3D wireless headphones, and its Media Remote, all sporting a similar white and black color scheme, and reminiscent of accessories available for the current PlayStation 4.
Sony
Sony is claiming the PS5 will be available this holiday season, around the same time Microsoft’s Xbox Series X is set to launch. What the company hasn’t revealed is a definitive launch date or price, although it’s probably safe to assume the disc-free digital version may be slightly cheaper than its Blu-ray-reading brother.
The Minneapolis Police Department’s website has shown signs of a hack since late Saturday, days after a video purported to be from the hacktivist group Anonymous promised retribution for the death of George Floyd during an arrest.
Websites for the police department and the city of Minneapolis were temporarily inaccessible on Saturday as protesters in cities around the U.S. marched against police violence aimed at black Americans.
By Sunday morning, the pages sometimes required visitors to submit “captchas” to verify they weren’t bots, a tool used to mitigate hacks that attempt to overwhelm pages with automated requests until they stop responding.
Officials with the police department and the city didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Anonymous posted a video on their unconfirmed Facebook page on May 28 directed at the Minneapolis police. The post accused them of having a “horrific track record of violence and corruption.”
The speaker, wearing a hoodie and the Guy Fawkes mask that’s a well-known symbol of the group, concludes the video with, “we do not trust your corrupt organization to carry out justice, so we will be exposing your many crimes to the world. We are a legion. Expect us.”
The video was viewed almost 2.3 million times on Facebook over the weekend, during which violence swept the U.S. as protesters clashed with law enforcement and National Guard troops.
While many demonstrations have been peaceful, others have devolved into rioting. Several cities issued curfews and police have at times turned their rubber bullets and mace on the activists and on journalists covering the protests.
President Donald Trump on Sunday cast blame on the media for stoking the violence that’s followed the death of Floyd, an unarmed black man, in Minnesota police custody.
President Trump started off his Tuesday as he does most days, with a series of tweets, the content of which many often find counterfactual. And for the first time, the social media company responded in a new way.
On Tuesday morning, the President declared in a pair of tweets that supplying voters with mail-in ballots, a move rising in popularity amid the coronavirus outbreak and one several states already employ, would be “substantially fraudulent.” Later on Tuesday evening, Twitter added a label to the posts with a blue exclamation point symbol and a warning that Trump was making an “unsubstantiated claim.”
“Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to ‘a Rigged Election.’ However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud,” a statement from the company read once users clicked on the alert.
There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Governor of California is sending Ballots to millions of people, anyone…..
….living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there, will get one. That will be followed up with professionals telling all of these people, many of whom have never even thought of voting before, how, and for whom, to vote. This will be a Rigged Election. No way!
The platform noted that only registered voters will receive ballots, and that mail-in ballots are already in use in several states. Twitter confirmed to TIME that it was the first time the company had put the warning on one of the President’s tweets.
The warning appears to be a significant change for the social media company, which has previously deflected calls to address several of the President’s tweets that critics said violate the company’s policies. After the President apparently made a violent threat against North Korea on the platform in 2017, the company implied that Trump’s tweet had not been deleted because it is newsworthy.
The new warnings on Trump’s tweets are aligned with the company’s updated policy on misinformation. On May 11, the company announced that it would add “new labels and warning messages that will provide additional context and information on some tweets containing disputed or misleading information related to COVID-19.”
On Tuesday evening, President Trump returned to Twitter to criticize the platform, accusing the company of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election.”
“Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!” Trump said.
.@Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election. They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post….
The President’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, also released a statement criticizing Twitter’s policy.
“We always knew that Silicon Valley would pull out all the stops to obstruct and interfere with President Trump getting his message through to voters,“ the statement said. “Partnering with the biased fake news media ‘fact checkers’ is only a smoke screen Twitter is using to try to lend their obvious political tactics some false credibility. There are many reasons the Trump campaign pulled all our advertising from Twitter months ago, and their clear political bias is one of them.”
The warnings materialized the same day a letter criticizing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey went viral over conspiratorial tweets Trump sent, suggesting former GOP Rep. Joe Scarborough was responsible for a young woman’s death. In the widely-circulated letter,widower Timothy Klausutis asked Dorsey to remove tweets by the President and Donald Trump Jr. that he said promoted a conspiracy theory that his deceased wife, was murdered. Klausutis cited that the statements are a violation of the company’scommunity rules and terms of service.
A Twitter spokesperson said to TIME that the company is “not taking action on the tweets at this time,” although the company is “working to expand existing product features and policies so we can more effectively address things like this going forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”
As of this writing, Twitter did had not yet removed the three tweets cited by Klausutis.
(CANBERRA, Australia) — Global digital platforms Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for news content in Australia, the government said on Monday as the coronavirus pandemic causes a collapse in advertising revenue.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, known as ACCC, would release in late July draft rules for the platforms to pay fair compensation for the journalistic content siphoned from news media.
Frydenberg said he believed that Australia could succeed where other countries, including France and Spain, had failed in making Google and Facebook pay.
“We’re very conscious of the challenges and complexity of ensuring a mandatory code. Many other countries have tried it without much success,” Frydenberg told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We think we can be world leading.”
“We do want the rules of the digital world to reflect as much as possible the rules of the physical world,” he added.
The ACCC had attempted to negotiate a voluntary code by which the global giants would agree to pay traditional media for their content.
But the parties couldn’t agree on “this key issue of payment for content,” Frydenberg said.
Google was netting 47% of online advertising spending excluding classified ads in Australia, and Facebook was claiming 24%, he said.
Google and Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Media companies have stopped printing dozens of newspaper mastheads across Australia because the pandemic shutdown has caused advertisers to stop spending.
(NEW YORK) — A possible strike by Instacart workers highlights the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on the grocery delivery business, where workers are worried about their safety as they try to meet a surge in demand for online groceries.
A group called the Gig Workers Collective is calling for a nationwide walk-out Monday. They’ve been asking Instacart to provide workers with hazard pay and protective gear, among other demands. Instacart said Sunday it would soon provide workers with a new hand sanitizer upon request and outlined changes to its tip system. The group said the measures were too little too late.
While some workers say they intend to join the strike for at least a day — or have stopped filling orders already for fear of getting the virus — other, newer workers are content to have a paying job at a time of mass layoffs in other industries.
The San Francisco-based delivery app is trying to hire 300,000 more workers — more than doubling its workforce —to fulfill orders it says have surged by 150% year-over year in the past weeks. The company said 50,000 new shoppers joined its platform in just the past week. Some customers are waiting days to receive orders.
Instacart currently has a workforce of more than 200,000 contracted workers who make multiple trips a day to various grocery stores to fulfill and deliver orders that customers make through the app. It also directly employs about 20,000 part-time workers who are assigned to a single store, collecting groceries that are subsequently delivered to clients by a contracted Instacart worker.
Chloe Grozdina, a part-time Instacart in-store shopper assigned to a Mariano’s grocery store in the Chicago area, says workers are seeing “a lot of apocalypse orders” from customers hunkered down in their homes. Panic shopping has cleared out the shelves, meaning she often has to replace a customer’s orders with a lesser item or notify them that it’s not available.
Grozdina, who makes $13 an hour and doesn’t get tips, said the crowds of fellow Instacart shoppers have made it tough to keep a safe distance while racing to fulfill orders. Grozdina said she wears a mask to work that she bought herself and immediately showers when she gets home.
Among their demands, the strike organizers want hazard pay of $5 an order and supplies of hand sanitizer, wipes and cleaning supplies free of charge. On Sunday, the company said it had contracted with a third-party manufacturer to make a hand sanitizer spray that workers can request at no cost via a website starting Monday, with shipments starting in a few days.
Data show online grocery orders jumping even before some cities and states imposed “stay at home” orders. During the week of March 2, Instacart, Amazon, and Walmart grocery delivery services each saw at least a 65 percent sales increase compared to the same time last year, according to estimates from Earnest Research.
Instacart has started offering bonuses of between $25 and $200 for its hourly employees dependent on hours worked until April 15.
Instacart also announced a month-long extension of a temporary policy giving 14 days of paid leave to workers who are diagnosed with coronavirus, or have been ordered to isolate themselves. The strike organizers that policy extended to workers with a doctor’s note verifying a pre-existing condition that could make them more vulnerable to the virus.
They also demanded that Intacart raise the tip default in its app to 10% from the current 5%. Instead, Instacart announced Sunday it would change the default to the amount the customer last tipped, saying tips have increased considerably during the virus crisis.
Instacart said previously that it has added more “promotions” — or extra pay for contracted full-service shoppers to accept certain orders.
That was not enough to lure back Shanna Foster, a single mother who stopped working her Instacart gig two weeks ago out of fear of contracting the virus.
“They need to give us hazard pay right now and it should be guaranteed,” said Foster, of Simi Valley, California.
Other companies such as Amazon and Walmart have also announced hiring sprees to meet a surge for both deliveries and in-store essentials. Amazon has increased pay for its workers, including those at its Whole Foods Grocery stores.
While such low-wage jobs put people on the front lines of the pandemic, many people are applying as layoffs surge in retail, restaurant, hospitality and other industries.
Summer Cooper, 39, started working as an Instacart shopper in the Tampa Bay area recently after losing her position as a server at a hotel restaurant. She was unaware of the possible strike.
“I’m grateful to have some way to make money,” Cooper said.
Darrin Burdette, an Instacart shopper in Colorado Springs, said joining a strike would “not help me in any way.”
An Uber driver, Burdette said he relies entirely on his Instacart gig since demand for ride-hailing services plunged. He said he is earning about $30 an hour as Instacart orders rise. On his app, he can see that many orders have come from people using the service for the first time.
Michelle Ellwood, 43, began using the app shortly after her family returned from a trip abroad and decided to self-isolate for two weeks. She said Instacart shoppers have gone out of their way to fulfill orders. One, she said, returned with a chicken after previously being unable to find meat at local stores.
“It’s amazing that they are doing this. I’m grateful. I’m hopeful they are able to take care of their families through this,” said Ellwood of Canandaigua, New York.
Making a list of the decade’s most important and influential gadgets is, in a word, illuminating — and that’s before you factor in all the LEDs. Over the last 10 years, thousands of products have been released, and while some are definitely “cooler” than others, their impact on the past decade, and the decade to come, is by no means identical.
Each gadget tells the story of a new way of thinking, a slow-moving paradigm shift set to change the way we approach the personal technology we interact with on a daily basis. Sure, you might not know what a Raspberry Pi is, but its impact on industries like robotics and home automation has been massive. Unfamiliar with the Adaptive Controller? That’s OK! But the elegantly executed idea has opened up a world of delight for gamers with disabilities. Think drones are just for shooting vacation footage? Think again — and watch your head.
Technology exists to augment the human condition, to make people smarter, better, and ultimately, more human. From smartphones and drones to consoles and cars, the past decade has more than enough life-changing devices to choose from. Here are TIME’s picks for the most important gadgets of the decade.
Before the iPad’s introduction in 2010, the idea of a “tablet computer” was mostly relegated to slick science fiction movies and unwieldy laptop-adjacent monstrosities running terrible software. Apple’s iPad — like the iPhone before it — resulted in a cultural shift for personal computing, and set the tone for the next decade of portable devices. Its impressive multitouch display, complete abandonment of physical keys, and gargantuan selection of software and media created a perfect storm of entertainment that everyone could get on board with. And while competitors have had ample time to make laptops or detachable two-in-one computers to attack the iPad’s biggest pain points, Apple has continuously advanced the platform’s iPadOS and hardware (Apple Pencil, anyone?), making any nerd optimistic about the next decade of tablet computing.
Tesla Model S (2012)
Think cars can’t be gadgets? Then you haven’t driven a Tesla Model S — or watched one drive up to you. The electric sedan has slowly reshaped the trajectory of the automotive industry, forcing competitors to embrace a battery-powered future instead of the gas-guzzling present, and challenging the belief that electric cars can’t be cool. Features like downloadable software updates, a huge touchscreen display and advanced autopilot capabilities make it feel like a vehicle from 2022 instead of 2012. Think of the Tesla Model S as the iPod of cars — if your iPod could do zero to 60 in 2.3 seconds.
At first glance, the Raspberry Pi looks more like a component that fell off the space station. But take a closer look at the miniature Linux computer, originally made for promoting coding in schools, and you’ll find a wide-ranging community in love with the blank slate it provides. To get started you’ll need a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. But once you’re plugged in, the possibilities are endless. Since its debut, a vibrant DIY ecosystem has sprung up around the Raspberry Pi, making it the go-to gadget for tinkerers, engineers, and that one relative you always call whenever your Wi-Fi is on the fritz. Sure, you can use it to learn to code, but it’s got the range to handle everything from robotics and home automation to entertainment. Makers and accessory manufacturers have turned the tiny boxes into everything your budding engineer brain can think of: weather stations, retro game consoles, smart speakers, cloud servers, the whole nine yards. After seven years on the market, and with over 25 million units sold, the Raspberry Pi is a tinkerer’s dream come true.
Google Chromecast (2013)
Google’s Chromecast, released in 2013, made it dead simple to beam media from your laptop or smartphone to your TV, helping popularize the very concept of streaming. It bridged the gap for people who wanted a piece of the future without investing in a pricey smart TV, or spending over a hundred bucks on some expensive and gaudy streaming box. At $35, Chromecast democratized streaming while giving users an integral piece of smart home connectivity for cheap. Now, the platform is capable of streaming more than media; Google’s added support for its game-streaming Stadia service to its more powerful Chromecast Ultra devices. It might not be an essential piece of technology in the decade to come, but the Chromecast’s influence on streaming media can’t be understated.
While you might hear a drone before you see it, chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what it sees, and how cool the view is a few hundred feet in the air. And of all the footage-capturing drones around, DJI’s Phantom is the most recognizable — and the most popular drone on YouTube. Its signature all-white design makes it hard to miss, and the company’s dedication to making drone piloting as simple as possible has made the Phantom an easy choice for beginning pilots, and a satisfying tool for aerial photography. And this is only the beginning. There’s already a professional drone racing league, and with companies betting on drones to handle everything from shipping goods to construction to surveillance, you’re bound to interact with more than a few in the decade to come.
Talking to yourself is still a little odd, but talking to your voice assistant has become a common activity in homes worldwide thanks to Amazon’s Alexa, the voice assistant built into its Echo devices and other smart home gadgets. Voice assistants are the new kid on the block, ideal for managing your smart home devices, handling media playback or quickly communicating with friends and family. Amazon’s Echo smart speaker and Alexa voice assistant is one of the most popular, with over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices sold as of 2019. As the first of its kind, Alexa blazed a trail for the multiple competitors trying to sell you on their own voice assistants to varying degrees of success. While convenient, though, the proliferation of devices like the Echo has spurred controversy surrounding the data collection practices of smart device manufacturers, becoming one of the most high-profile privacy issues of our time.
While many have tried, no one has been able to match the polish and performance of the Apple Watch, which set the standard for what a smartwatch could do. Since its introduction in 2015, it’s gone from a device for early adopters and fashion-deficient nerds to a mainstream accessory, thanks to its smart software and ever-improving hardware. And as the Apple Watch expands its health-oriented features, it could become the easiest way to keep your health on track and your day on schedule.
Like the iconic iPod before it, Apple’s AirPods have captured the hearts, minds and ears of music lovers looking to jam to some tunes. First released in 2016, AirPods quickly became an icon in their own right, both for their aesthetic appeal as well as their larger cultural impact. But widespread adoption hasn’t come without criticism. Itscontroversial manufacturing methodsmake disposal and recycling difficult, and could alter how we think about the future of our gadgets once we’re done with them. AirPods even carry social significance thanks to the glut classist jokes and memes spread across social media, transforming them into earbuds that double as a not-so-subtle status indicator. However, their cutting-edge hardware and software evolved further in this year’s AirPods Pro, and helped cement them as the gold standard of truly wireless audio for music fans.
When it comes to gaming on the go, no one can top Nintendo’s track record, beginning with the humble Game Boy in 1989. But the introduction of its hybrid Nintendo Switch in 2017 — which you can play either portably or connected to your TV — might be the company’s most important contribution to gaming yet. Compared to the competition, it handily takes the crown as the most important video game console of the decade, with fans begging developers to bring their next title to the Switch. Its smartphone-inspired portability, paired with Nintendo’s ever-growing library of blockbuster, independent and vintage titles, makes the Switch feel like the culmination of Nintendo’s idea of what gaming should be.
Xbox Adaptive Controller (2018)
Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller, made for gamers with limited mobility and highly modifiable for different users’ needs, is perhaps my favorite gadget of the decade, and one I pray is duplicated by other major game companies. Not only does it look slick, it’s designed to accommodate a subset of gamers long ignored by the larger gaming industry. Microsoft worked alongside organizations like the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and the AbleGamers Charity to shape everything from the huge buttons on its face to its accessible packaging. With over a dozen ports for connecting assistive controllers, buttons and joysticks, and its compatibility with both Xbox One consoles and Windows PCs, Xbox’s Adaptive Controller is one of the most important developments in the gaming industry, and should put a smile on anyone’s face.
