Spotify can now show its users in the European Union how much its plans cost within its iOS app after their trial period ends. The company has revealed that it's opting into Apple's "entitlement" for music streaming services in an update to an old blog post. This "entitlement" was created after the European Commission slapped Apple with a €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion) fine back in March for restricting alternative music streaming apps on the App Store. The commission's decision followed an investigation that was opened when Spotify filed a complaint against the tech company, accusing it of suppressing its service in favor of iTunes and Apple Music.
Apple initially rejected the update that Spotify submitted in April this year to add "basic pricing and website information" on its app in Europe. Now that Apple has approved changes, users will be able to see pricing information, as well as promotional offers, within the Spotify app for iPhones. They'll also see a note saying that they can go to the Spotify website to subscribe to any of the service's plans. However, the service chose not to provide users with an in-app link that would give them access to external payment options. As The Verge notes, it's because Apple recently tweaked its App Store rules in the EU, stating that it will still take a cut of developers' sales even if customers pay via third-party providers.
"Unfortunately, Spotify and all music streaming services in the EU are still not able to freely give consumers a simple opportunity to click a link to purchase in app because of the illegal and predatory taxes Apple continues to demand, despite the Commission’s ruling," Spotify wrote in its post. It added that "if the European Commission properly enforces its decision, iPhone consumers could see even more wins, like lower cost payment options and better product experiences in the app."
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/apple-finally-allows-spotify-to-display-pricing-in-the-eu-123010178.html?src=rss
It’s the end of an era for social media research. Meta has shut down CrowdTangle, the analytics tool that for years helped tens of thousands of researchers, journalists and civil society groups understand how information was spreading on Facebook and Instagram.
For a company that’s never been known for being transparent about its inner workings, CrowdTangle was an “invaluable” resource for those hoping to study Meta’s platform, says Brandi Geurkink, the executive director for the Coalition for Independent Technology Research. “It was one of the only windows that anybody had into how these platforms work,” Geurkink tells Engadget. “The fact that CrowdTangle was available for free and to such a wide variety of people working on public interest journalism and research means that it was just an invaluable tool.”
Over the years, CrowdTangle has powered a staggering amount of research and reporting on public health, misinformation, elections and media. Its data has been cited in thousands of journal articles, according to Google Scholar. News outlets have used the tool to track elections and changes in the publishing industry. It’s also provided unparalleled insight into Facebook itself. For years, CrowdTangle data has been used by journalists to track the origins of viral misinformation, hoaxes and conspiracy theories on the social network. Engadget relied on CrowdTangle to uncover the overwhelming amount of spam on Facebook Gaming.
Meta wasn’t always quite as averse to transparency as it is now. The company acquired CrowdTangle in 2016, and for years encouraged journalists, researchers and other civil society groups to use its data. Facebook provided training to academics and newsrooms, and it regularly highlighted research projects that relied on its insights.
But the narrative began to shift in 2020. That’s when a New York Times reporter created an automated Twitter bot called “Facebook Top Ten.” It used CrowdTangle data to share the top Facebook pages based on engagement. At the time, right-wing figures and news outlets like Dan Bongino, Fox News and Ben Shapiro regularly dominated the lists. The Twitter account, which racked up tens of thousands of followers, was often cited in the long-simmering debate about whether Facebook’s algorithms exacerbated political polarization in the United States.
Meta repeatedly pushed back on those claims. Its executives argued that engagement — the number of times a post is liked, shared or commented on — is not an accurate representation of its total reach on the social network. In 2021, Meta began publishing its own reports on the most “widely viewed” content on its platform. Those reports suggested that spam is often more prevalent than political content, though researchers have raised significant questions about how those conclusions were reached.
More recently, Meta executives have suggested that CrowdTangle was never intended for research. “It was built for a wholly different purpose,” Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, said earlier this year. “It just simply doesn’t tell you remotely what is going on on Facebook at any time.” CrowdTangle founder Brandon Silverman, who has criticized Meta’s decision to shut down the service ahead of global elections, told Fast Company it was originally meant to be a community organizing tool, but quickly morphed into a service “to help publishers understand the flow of information across Facebook and social media more broadly.”
Clegg’s explanation is a “retcon,” according to Alice Marwick, principal researcher at the Center for Information Technology and Public Life at University of North Carolina. “We were trained on CrowdTangle by people who worked at Facebook,” Marwick tells Engadget. “They were very enthusiastic about academics using it.”
In place of CrowdTangle, Meta has offered up a new set of tools for researchers called the Meta Content Library. It allows researchers to access data about public posts on Facebook and Instagram. It’s also much more tightly controlled than CrowdTangle. Researchers must apply and go through a vetting process in order to access the data. And while tens of thousands of people had access to CrowdTangle, only “several hundred” researchers have reportedly been let into the Meta Content Library. Journalists are ineligible to even apply unless they are part of a nonprofit newsroom or partnered with a research institution.
Advocates for the research community, including CrowdTangle’s former CEO, have also raised questions about whether Meta Content Library is powerful enough to replicate CrowdTangle’s functionality. “I’ve had researchers anecdotally tell me [that] for searches that used to generate hundreds of results on CrowdTangle, there are fewer than 50 on Meta Content Library,” Geurkink says. “There’s been a question about what data source Meta Content Library is actually pulling from.”
The fact that Meta chose to shut down CrowdTangle less than three months before the US presidential election, despite pressure from election groups and a letter from lawmakers requesting a delay, is particularly telling. Ahead of the 2020 election, CrowdTangle created a dedicated hub for monitoring election-related content and provided its tools to state election officials.
But Marwick notes there has been a broader backlash against research into social media platforms. X no longer has a free API, and has made its data prohibitively expensive for all but the most well-funded research institutions. The company’s owner has also sued two small nonprofits that conducted research he disagreed with.
“There is no upside to most of these platforms to letting researchers muck around in their data, because we often find things that aren’t PR-friendly, that don’t fit the image of the platform that they want us to believe.”
While CrowdTangle never offered a complete picture of what was happening on Facebook, it provided an important window into a social network used by billions of people around the world. That window has now been slammed shut. And while researchers and advocates are worried about the immediate impact that will have on this election cycle, the consequences are much bigger and more far reaching. “The impact is far greater than just this year or just work related to elections,” Geurkink says. “When you think about a platform that large, with that much significance in terms of where people get their sources of information on a wide array of topics, the idea that nobody except for the company has insight into that, is crazy.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/meta-killed-crowdtangle-an-invaluable-research-tool-because-what-it-showed-was-inconvenient-121700584.html?src=rss
To squeeze the most productivity possible out of a laptop, or even a high-end tablet, you might need to plug in more stuff than your machine natively allows. A USB-C hub connects to a single port on your device, and through that you can attach a monitor, keyboard, mouse and even external storage. Plus, when you’ve got all your bells and whistles plugged into a hub, freeing up your device to be more mobile is as simple as unplugging one thing. Then, when you return to your desk, one step fully connects you again. We checked out hundreds of hubs before testing out 15 highly rated options to find the best USB-C hubs you can get today.
What to look for in a USB-C hub
Hub vs docking station
The first thing to decide is whether you need a USB-C hub or a docking station. There’s no set standard for what differentiates the two, but docking stations tend to have more ports, offer a separate DC power supply and cost more, with some reaching upwards of $400. We have a separate guide to the best docking stations to check out if you’re looking for something bigger than what we’re discussing here. USB-C hubs, in contrast, have between four and 10 ports, can support pass-through charging and typically cost between $30 and $150.
Hubs make more sense for smaller setups with just a few peripherals, such as a monitor, a wired keyboard and mouse, and the occasional external drive. They’re also more portable, since they’re small and require no dedicated power. That could be useful if you change work locations but want to bring your accessories with you, or if you want to replace your laptop with a more powerful tablet. A docking station makes more sense for someone who needs a robust setup for their laptop, including multiple external monitors, webcams, stream decks, microphones and so on.
Both docks and hubs make it easy to grab your laptop off your desk for a meeting or other brief relocation and when you get back, plugging in one cable gets all your accessories reconnected.
Ports
The first port to consider is the one on your laptop or tablet. For a USB-C hub to work, it needs to connect to a port that supports video, data and power — all of which is covered by anything listed as USB 3.0 or better. The port, of course, needs to be Type-C as well. The sea of laptops out there is vast, so it’s hard to make generalizations, but modern laptops should have at least one USB-C port that will suffice, and indeed, every one of our top picks for the best laptops do.
Next, it’s a matter of finding a hub that has the right connections for your needs. Most hubs offer some combo of HDMI, USB, memory card, Ethernet and 3.5 mm ports. If you have a 4K monitor and would like at least a 60Hz refresh rate, you’ll need a hub with an HDMI 2.0 port — HDMI 1.4 only goes up to 30Hz. HDMI 2.1 will handle 4K at up to 120Hz, but hubs that have adopted that standard aren’t as common just yet. Keep in mind that a low refresh rate can cause your screen to feel laggy, making your mouse appear glitchy and your webcam movements to look delayed.
Additional USB ports on these accessories are usually Type-A or Type-C. They can support data with different transfer rates, typically 5Gbps or 10Gbps. Some ports only handle passthrough power and no data, and some can do data, power and video, so it’s best to check the spec list to make sure you’re getting the support you need. Keep in mind that a hub may bill itself as a 7-in-1, but one of those ports may not be usable for anything other than charging.
Standard SD and microSD slots are useful for transferring data from cameras and the like. Ethernet ports may deliver faster internet speeds than your Wi-Fi and a hub with a 3.5mm jack can bring back the wired headphone connection that some laptops have ditched.
Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget
Power delivery
Nearly all of the USB-C hubs I tested support passthrough charging. That means if your laptop or tablet only charges via USB, you don’t have to take up another port on your laptop to keep everything topped up. Unlike a docking station, powering a hub is optional. The one exception is if you want to close the lid on your laptop while you work on an external monitor. Most computers will go into sleep mode if the lid is closed without power, so either the laptop or the hub will need to be plugged into the wall to prevent that from happening.
Many of the newer hubs include a 100W power delivery (PD) port, with a healthy 80 to 85 watts going to your computer (the hubs take a little of the juice for themselves, hence the 15-watt or so difference). In my tests, sending power through the hub made them run even hotter than they do already, so I prefer to charge the computer directly. But for tablets or other devices with no extra ports, that PD option is important.
Some PD ports are also data ports — which is both good and bad. On one hand, it feels wasteful to use a perfectly good data port just for boring old electricity. But on the other hand, USB-C connections that only carry a charge are less versatile, and it makes it seem like it has more accessory hookups than it actually does.
Design
There’s surprisingly little design variation among hubs. Most look like a flat slab, a little smaller than a smartphone, and have an attached Type-C host cable. The hues range from a silvery black to a silvery gray. Some are thinner than others, some have all ports on one edge and some have ports on both sides. All of this is just to say that aesthetics probably won’t make or break your buying decision.
One variation that could tip the scales is the length of the cable. A longer one will give you more freedom as you arrange the hub on your desk, potentially even letting you hide it behind your laptop. Or you may prefer a shorter one to keep the hub neatly set beside your laptop.
How we test USB-C hubs
Before we test anything, we take a look at what’s available and how they’ve been received by shoppers, forum-goers and other publications. I became familiar with a few reputable brands when I was testing docking stations, so I looked into hubs from those companies as well. I focused on items that would help with an average day of productivity — not high-end setups or demanding gaming situations. Once I settled on a dozen or so that would make good candidates, I had them shipped to my humble office in the desert and started testing them out over the course of a few weeks.
I used an M1 MacBook Pro as the host computer and plugged in accessories that include a 4K Dell monitor, a ZSA USB-C ergo keyboard, a Logitech USB-A gaming mouse, an Elgato USB-C 4K webcam, a Logitech streaming light, a USB-A 3.0 Sandisk thumb drive, a USB-C Samsung T7 Shield external drive and a pair of wired headphones I got for free on an airplane (I should probably invest in some wired headphones, but the cord dangling on my chest drives me nutty so all my earbuds are wireless). I used high-end HDMI and USB-C cables to ensure that any data or connectivity issues weren’t related to my equipment.
Then I put each USB-C hub through a gamut of basic tests. I looked at what could be plugged in at once, the resolution on the monitor, data transfer speeds, the overall build quality of the hub and general usability factors, like the placement of the ports and the length of the cords. And, finally, the price to value ratio helped determine the best ones for a few different use cases.
Best USB-C hubs for 2024
Other hubs we tested
HyperDrive Next 10 Port USB-C Hub
There’s a lot to like about HyperDrive’s Next 10 Port USB-C Hub. The tethered cable is a lavish 13 inches long, the HDMI 2.0 port outputs clear and crisp 4K visuals at 60Hz and the data transfers are screaming fast. It has the coveted two USB-C data ports plus a PD port, and there’s even a headphone jack. The only thing that holds back a full-throated endorsement is the way our unit handled a streaming light. Having it on at full brightness made the webcam flicker every time. The issue went away at 75 percent brightness, but the same problem didn’t happen on any other hub I tested.
Anker 341 USB-C Hub (7-in-1)
There’s nothing wrong with the Anker 341 USB-C hub. In fact it’s a current recommendation in our iPad accessories guide and it comes at a great $35 price. It gives you two USB-A ports as well as SD slots. But at this point, a 1.4 HDMI connection, which only supports 4K resolution at 30Hz feels a little retro. There’s also just a single USB-C downstream port and the data transfer tests proved to be a touch slower than the other hubs. But if you’ve got a lower resolution monitor and don’t need more than one USB-C, you won’t be disappointed with it.
Startech 4-Port USB-C Hub (data only)
I only became aware of Startech when I started researching for this guide. The quality is decent and the yellow accents are a welcome bit of color in the otherwise very gray world of hubs. The performance is solid, with no hiccups that I encountered. The brand’s 4-Port USB-C Hub has a long cord that wraps around the hub itself, which is unique. It doesn’t bother with power delivery, which isn’t an issue if you can power your computer directly. But the four USB ports (three Type-A and one Type-C) max out at 5Gbps and there’s no HDMI connector. It goes for $46, and unfortunately for it, there are cheaper ways to get a few more USB ports for your setup.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-usb-c-hub-120051833.html?src=rss
To support its latest Pixel 9 phones with faster charging speeds, Google has quietly unveiled a new 45 watt charger. That speed is well beyond what its latest devices can handle, so it may allow for future device support.
Charging rates are a mixed bag with the new Pixel 9 phones. The Pixel 9 charges at 27W, the same as before, and the Pixel 9 Pro also charges at 27W, less than the Pixel 8 Pro’s 30W. The new Pixel 9 Pro XL, however charges at 37W, up considerably from any previous model (the PIxel 9 Pro Fold’s 21W max charging speed is unchanged).
The previous charger topped out at 30W, matching the Pixel 8 Pro’s maximum rate, but the new 45W model has an extra 8W of capacity over the Pixel 9 Pro XL. That could allow Google to use the same charger for the Pixel 10, much as it used the 30W charger for both the Pixel 7 and Pixel 8.
It’s nice to have the extra charging speeds on the Pixel Pro XL (and no other model) and it does keep pace with its primary competitor, Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra (45W). However, some Chinese phones like the Redmi Note 12 Explorer (210W) and Realme GT5 (240W) leave them both in the dust. The latter, for instance, can go from empty to a 100 percent charge in less than 10 minutes. The fastest-charging phone currently sold in the US is the OnePlus 12 (80W).
Google’s new charger sells for $30, which is a decent price if you want to stick with the brand. However, you can find a fully compatible Anker or third-party 45W USB-C PD charger for $20 any day of the week.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-announced-a-45w-usb-c-charger-thats-faster-than-its-new-pixel-9-phones-can-handle-120035213.html?src=rss
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