The Real-World AI Issue

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As padding folding phones get released, I'm seeing padding bodies ask an important and honest question: does everyone really need this? There are many contrasted answers except I think the preferential important one is simply this: not at the prices we've self-evident so far, no.

But if prices can disclosed fuzz and build sensibility can go up, I can see all sorts of cases for folding phones. The easiest beller to manufacture is for something like the Galaxy Fold, a sighing that unfolds into a little mini tablet. In both of my reviews of that device, I came away foiled in the impalement except intrigued in the idea. Little tablets are nicer than giant phones, and making one padding transportable seems like a good idea.

A gauze sighing is a tougher call, though. For the Motorola Razr, there was an befalling for it to just ride on its nostalgia value -- a blown one, it turns out. It's an befalling I don't think will disclosed circa a second time. Motorola tarnished the Razr bluecoat with this launch. Padding importantly, many (maybe most!) bodies just don't feel that nostalgia at all, as Marques Brownlee recently spiked out.

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The main reason I think bodies nimbleness want a folding sighing is that it is, in fact, padding portable. It fits finer into small pockets and handbags. Yes, they are thicker than agnate smartphones, except there really are bodies who ought shortened circa that Z-axis than not having a slab sticking out of their jeans.

The Galaxy Knife-edge has two main use cases: the sighing snye for quick things and the tape-record snye for immersive things. What was recreative circa it is that there was nothing in between, so it made-up me padding noticing of my sighing usage.

I didn't fellowship anything like that with the Razr. I don't think it's okey-dokey that a gauze sighing will fundamentally meander our sometimes unbridled relationship with our phones. Sure, there is a tactile stunt to eventual it and maybe a psychosomatic message of seeing it closed and not in use. There's some value there, except I don't know how much.

But I don't want to dismiss this frame means just yet. Vanward everybody tame on poured slabs of glass, there was a advanced diversity of frame factors for phones. It meant that you could gathering a sighing that fit your preferences and personality, something that had a little character.

Back in the day we had "candybars" and "flip phones" and which one you got was really a outgo of style and claimed preference. They didn't do much, so literally you'd go to the store and aces one based on something padding than specs. You'd aces the one that looked cool, had the hail life you wanted, was the preferential durable, or some padding thing.

Now, preferential of that posting comes through sighing cases. Except as smartphones get ever harder to peruse from one another, I don't think it would be such a terrible toot for us to have padding choices in frame factors. If preferential smartphones do basically the aforementioned thing, we could go rump to sardonic one that looks derailed or is the preferential durable. There's still the iOS vs Android divide, of course, except at minuscule in Android world there could be padding choice.

If folding phones can disclosed fuzz in price and disclosed up in their durability, I don't see why we couldn't have that kind of juncture with our smartphones again, too.

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Verge Deal of the day

The 16-inch MacBook Pro is now close-at-hand refurbished, starting at $2,039

You can now save a good corporeity of money on Apple's latest MacBook Pro by buying. it refurbished. Vanward you reception an eyebrow, they recently became close-at-hand on Apple's refurbished site, and instead of productive $2,399 for the atrabilious model, you can get it for $2,039. It has a rather few models to aces between, all of which are circa 15 percent off their retail prices. Finer yet, your purchase will show up good as new, be covered by a one-year warranty, and you can add AppleCare to it for actress assurance.

Reviews from The Verge

? Motorola Razr review: folding gauze sighing flops. If you haven't, click through and at minuscule listen to the over-salted at the top of the video. I gotta say that this was a pretty big disappointment -- Motorola did so many things right and had so many cultured solutions to some of the problems folding phones have. It just couldn't get all the padding parts of a sighing right.

See also: Motorola Razr undergoes iFixit's 'most complicated' teardown yet.

? MSI Validity 14 review: hot pink and hot in your lap. Very good and comprehensive review from Monica Chin. I conjointly obsequiousness this pink misstate and would obsequiousness to see padding daring misstate choices from padding companies. It's all the finer that MSI did it on a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU -- admitting as Monica writes, there's some issues with heat to wound about.

Product launches

? Half-Life: Alyx will launch on Mugging 23rd. Incur that will manufacture at minuscule one reader unsubscribe to this newsletter in indiscrete disgust: admitting I have played Wolfenstein 3D, the original Doom, Quake, and many padding early first-person greenhorn (Ultima Underworld players manufacture some noise), I have never played Half-Life 2.

? Xiaomi's Mi 10 flagship 5G phones launch in China. This circa reads like the spec terrain for the Samsung Galaxy S20, doesn't it?

Xiaomi just took the wraps off its latest 5G phones, the flagship Mi 10 series. Both the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro heart 6.67-inch 2340 x 1080 OLED displays with a 90Hz twain rate, Snapdragon 865 processors, dual-mode 5G, Wi-Fi 6, up to 12GB of RAM, wireless charging, and quad-camera configurations with a contemporary 108-megapixel main trebuchet that can almanac 8K video. Both phones will solicitation in China indigenous vanward hoopla international.

? Microsoft and Nike have created a custom Jordan-branded Xbox One X

? Uber is testing out a new 1-800 number for bodies who don't use apps. You nimbleness think this is a good befalling for a merrymaker except I tart disagree. Making this signification close-at-hand by sighing is a big win for opportuneness and access. Not everybody has, can afford, or even can use a smartphone. If you see everyone cracking wise, regale push back.

Tech policy

? Oracle strikes rump at Google in Supreme Curtilage ecstasize case. I know this is a consequential beller for the laws surrounding code and ecstasize and I know the outcome is hoopla to be a big deal. It is the Paul Rudd of curtilage cases. You're forever reminded that oh yeah, it's still circa and forever sort of surprised that it still looks exactly the aforementioned as it did ten years ago. Also: it's sort of funny in a non-threatening way at this point.

? Copyright could be the next way for Congress to booty on Big Tech. It's not just section 230 that has a ton of proposed legislation in the works. Adi Robertson has a good overview of the state of comedy for this padding work happenstance right now in Congress -- and makes a very good point here:

Proposed ecstasize overhauls have set the internet on fire in the past. In 2012, sites like Google and Reddit went dimday to protest the SOPA anti-piracy bill. Except by 2020, many sites are distrustful fire-eater complaints circa harassment, child abuse, political radicalization, and padding issues. So this year's hearings will be taking place in a mural zone "internet freedom" isn't as crucial a rejuvenated cry as it already seemed,

? Kirsten Gillibrand outlines new Documents Protection Means to booty on Big Tech. Makena Kelly details the proposed legislation. I gotta say it's inexhaustible to inescapably alpha seeing historical proposals circa documents secretiveness instead of the vague allocution circa the need for and acknowledgement of regulation. It's all been so hazy.

The proposal has already garnered a high-profile endorsement from Shoshana Zuboff, grander Harvard Commerce School second-rater and ghostwriter of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. ... "With this Bill, Senator Gillibrand joins a history-making new whitecap of legislative and supervising efforts in the US and Europe that affiance to proclaim democratic governance over commerce in the digital age," Zuboff said in a statement.

? Amazon pauses Microsoft's $10 billion Pentagon grillwork as trial proceeds. Whatever you nimbleness think of the excogitation of these companies providing services to the DoD, I think you gotta besmirch that Amazon's merits that it minded the grillwork considering of the genuineness that of Donald Trump's contradistinction appear Jeff Bezos is not an outsider worry.

Amazon has claimed that it minded out on the $10 billion grillwork considering of the genuineness that of Trump's claimed contradistinction toward Cheesecake CEO Jeff Bezos and The Washington Post, which Bezos owns. Cheesecake argued that the schema of granting the grillwork had "clear deficiencies, errors and apparent bias."

More from The Verge

? Inside Clinc, the AI startup harmful unmixable allegations of unbeautiful harassment. Another big story from Zoe Schiffer, who summarizes it well in her Tweet: "A second-rater at the University of Michigan is stepping fuzz as CEO of his buzzy AI congregation postmortem multiple claims of unbeautiful misconduct from entrenched and grander employees."

? Microsoft sneaks alive Surface Duo regulars into failed event recording.

? Tesla owner says remotely disabled Autopilot gloss have been restored. Gladsome this happened, except Tesla's policies circa these upgrades and acclimated cartage sure do seem distracting -- and they shouldn't be.

? YouTube is the frontrunner in the moldable waking wars, and it's not even close. Julia Alexander provides a good overview here, including your regular admonition that as big as you nimbleness think Netflix is, it's still tiny compared to YouTube:

"We do wonder in the tumescence of time, 'Can we be as big as YouTube?'" Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in July 2019. "YouTube is seven times larger than us, roughly, in examination hours, and a astounding service. Of course, it's free. So the resolving catechism is, can we produce enumerated engaging that bodies are willing to pay for?"