Monday’s top tech news: the beginning of the end for Windows 10

Apple has released iOS 16.3, which adds the ability to use a security key to lock down your Apple ID and appears to bring the company’s Advanced Data Protection for iCloud feature to countries outside of the US. It also tweaks the Emergency SOS call system, includes a new “Unity” wallpaper, and adds new features for the existing HomePod Mini (as well as support for the second-gen HomePod).

Last year, Apple announced the hardware key feature, which lets you use something like a Yubikey as a second factor to log in to your Apple account, as part of a push to help people lock down their iCloud accounts. Also included in that announcement was Advanced Data Protection, which expands the types of data that are end-to-end-encrypted in your cloud storage. The feature came to the US with iOS 16.2, but the update released on Monday seems to make it available globally — Apple has removed a note from a support document saying that it’s only available in the US, and we’ve seen at least one report from someone in another country saying it’s available.

Unlike the oral sex-averse Gothamites of DC’s mainline comic books, the animated deviants over on HBO Max’s Harley Quinn series will go down in history as being some of the horniest takes on characters like Batman, Kite Man (hell yeah), and Poison Ivy. Usually, the show’s found really thoughtful ways to dig into the sex lives of its heroes and villains while revealing interesting things about them. But from the looks of Harley Quinn’s upcoming Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special, it seems like everyone’s going to be getting it on for the most comic book-y reason possible: superpowers gone haywire.

By the end of Harley Quinn’s third season, Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) had made it through their first major rough patch as a couple, come out stronger for it, and resolved to do everything in their power to make their relationship work. In the upcoming special, the pair are making good on their promises to one another as they prepare to celebrate their first Valentine’s Day together, and while Ivy wants to do something quiet just for them, Harley has every intention of doing it up big for her lady.

Electric vehicle company Lightyear has announced that it’s halting production on the Lightyear 0, its €250,000 (around $270,000 USD) solar-powered car that the company started making just three months ago (via Electrek). The setback is part of a “strategic restructuring,” according to a Monday blog post, and the company will instead focus on making the Lightyear 2, a car that it says will cost under $40,000 and go into production in late 2025.

The company says it didn’t take the decision lightly, given that it’ll impact its employees, as well as “investors, clients, suppliers and the government.” It’ll also presumably have an impact on Valmet Automotive, the company Lightyear contracted to build the 0 (and which announced potential layoffs at the facility responsible for making the car earlier this month). As for why Lightyear’s decided to halt production, the company is vague — it says it’s faced several challenges over the past several months and that the move is meant to “safeguard our vision.”

Wyze already announced three new cameras this month, but it looks like the company has even more up its sleeves. Tech blogger Dave Zatz dug up information on two not-yet-announced cameras: a new Wyze outdoor cam and an updated Wyze Cam Floodlight.

The Wyze Cam Outdoor Pro (or possibly Wyze Battery Cam Pro) looks to be an upgrade of the Wyze Cam Outdoor v2, adding 2K video resolution. The new Wyze Cam Floodlight Pro also appears to be getting a 2K resolution bump over the original 1080p model, in keeping with Wyze’s new line of Pro cameras, as well as possibly more flood lighting.

Several of America’s biggest banks, including the likes of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, are joining forces to launch their own digital payment wallet that can be used for online shopping, according to The Wall Street Journal. The planned new wallet is a response to increased consumer usage of digital payments — particularly Apple Pay, PayPal, and ones from other tech companies, including Google Pay and Amazon Pay.

The currently nameless wallet will be handled by Early Warning Services (EWS), the company behind the direct money transfer service Zelle — though the two products will reportedly not intersect. EWS is a bank-owned joint venture between Capital One, PNC, US Bancorp, Truist, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase.

Thanks to a recent firmware update to Razer’s Kishi V2 mobile gaming controller and the Razer Nexus app, the controller can now support games that were previously touchscreen-only on Android. There is currently no firm launch window for a similar rollout for iOS devices, but the Virtual Controller Mode is slated to come to Razer’s Edge tablet controller sometime in Q1 2023.

This new feature is accessible through Razer’s free Nexus app, which in addition to now letting you remap controller inputs to touchscreen controls, provides a centralized hub to launch games and stream them on Facebook Live or YouTube. Nexus may not be quite as capable as the Backbone app but is entirely free, whereas the Backbone Plus app requires an annual subscription fee of $39.99 to access all of its features.

The Supreme Court has asked the US solicitor general to submit briefs in a set of lawsuits over internet moderation in Texas and Florida, making the court likely to take one or both of the cases with a delay. As noted by CNN reporter Brian Fung this morning, the court solicited the briefs in a Monday morning list of orders, inviting President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice to formulate an official position on internet speech.

The orders cover lawsuits by trade organization NetChoice against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody as well as a counterclaim by Moody against NetChoice. Both states passed laws making it illegal for large web services to suspend or otherwise penalize users in many cases, particularly instances that Republican lawmakers have characterized as biased against conservative politics. A series of temporary injunctions have left both laws on hold — the Florida rule thanks to an appeals court decision and the Texas one due to a NetChoice Supreme Court petition, where a dissenting opinion indicated the Supreme Court would likely consider the issue.

Fortnite on iOS is about to become an even more limited experience. The game was removed from the iOS and Mac app stores and Google Play in August 2020 due to Epic Games’ legal spats with Apple and Google, meaning those versions of Fortnite have missed out on many updates to and even entire seasons of the constantly refreshed battle royale hit. But starting January 30th, players who got Fortnite from those platforms won’t be able to spend V-Bucks to buy in-game items and will have to be older than 18 years of age to play, Epic said in a tweet from its Fortnite status Twitter account on Monday.

Technically, if you got Fortnite from those platforms, you can still play the game if you happened to have it installed before it was removed from the app stores, but it’s perpetually trapped at version 13.40. To give you an idea of just how far back that is, that means players haven’t been able to experience things like the Marvel-themed season (which kicked off in August 2020), the Ariana Grande concert (which took place in August 2021), or the recent introduction of a new island and dirt bikes (which were added in December 2022). The changes announced Monday will further cripple those versions of the game — my colleague Andrew Webster already called Fortnite on iOS “empty and dated” shortly after the app was pulled.

I imagine you have questions.

In no particular order:

Meta’s bringing Messenger’s core customization features to end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chats on the platform. That means encrypted chats can now incorporate themes, custom emoji, reactions, group profile photos, and a whole lot more.

Messenger’s E2EE chats hide your online conversations from third parties, including Facebook itself. It also makes it more difficult for law enforcement and hackers to access the messages you’re sending and receiving. WhatsApp already has E2EE by default, and Instagram lets people switch on E2EE for individual conversations.

Microsoft says it’s extending its long-term partnership with OpenAI through a new “multiyear, multibillion dollar investment.” The investment comes just weeks after Microsoft was rumored to be investing $10 billion into OpenAI, the creators of popular AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2.

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”

You’re not going to believe me when I tell you this, but Forspoken is pretty good. The game got off to an inauspicious start, getting delayed a couple of times and dinged in the court of public opinion for some cringey dialogue, an inexplicable name, exorbitant PC requirements, and for featuring a Black heroine but with no Black writers working on her. Despite all that, Square Enix and Luminous Productions managed to deliver a game that I thoroughly enjoyed playing with an ending that I’m cautiously stating is one of the best I’ve seen. (Which I’ll go into at a later date because spoilers.)

Forspoken had its hooks in me within the first 30 minutes. It starts with an introduction to Frey Holland, a young Black woman who was abandoned at birth in the Holland Tunnel with naught but a blanket bearing her name, in court for attempting to steal a car. Since this is Frey’s third felony offense, the judge considers throwing the book at her because of the repeat offender statute, aka the three strikes law. But because it’s almost Christmas and the judge sympathizes with Frey’s struggle to survive without parents or guidance, she is instead let go to return to the abandoned apartment she squats in with her cat Homer. 

Sony’s DualSense Edge is like a director’s cut of a movie that improves on the original vision but costs 185 percent more to watch. Enjoyment is always hard to quantify, but this $199.99 controller (almost the cost of three DualSense gamepads) is stuffed with features that might be worth that extra cost to you, or not. 

This may help you figure it out: have you ever, during the PS5’s going on three years of existence, wished for a controller with back paddles, swappable analog stick modules that require no tools to switch, and function keys that let you swap controls and adjust volume without popping in and out of annoying menus? If that’s your bar for saying yes, the DualSense Edge will likely satisfy you since it can do even more than that. There currently isn’t a PS5 controller that matches it, though the $219.99 Scuf Reflex Pro comes closest.

We meet again, MacBook Pro 16. And it’s a rather boring meeting. We don’t have all that much to say to each other.

The 2023 MacBook Pro 16 is almost exactly the same as the 2021 MacBook Pro 16 except that there is a new chip inside. And just to get one thing out of the way: no, there is not a good reason to buy the 2023 model if you already have the 2021 model. I don’t assume many folks were thinking of doing that. But in case you were tempted, consider this a friendly finger wag in your direction. Your $2,500-plus 2021 model is still fine. 

Before the Mac’s resurgence a few years ago, the idea that Apple might produce a machine like the new Mac Mini was a distant dream. The company’s compact desktop was rarely updated and mostly ignored — we often waited many years between major refreshes. But things eventually started clicking for the entire Mac portfolio. The disastrous butterfly keyboard was retired. Real buttons replaced the MacBook Pro’s underused touch bar. And it all hit a fever pitch when Apple introduced its own processors — first in speedy laptops that also established new highs for battery life and then in desktops like the redesigned iMac and wicked-fast Mac Studio. 

The Mac Mini was part of the first wave of Apple silicon products in 2020, and it was a strong performer in a tiny package. But it was also a minimal effort release that came with some tradeoffs: namely, the M1 Mac Mini topped out at 16GB of RAM and had fewer ports than the Intel-powered model, which Apple continued to sell until the introduction of this Mac Mini last week. Now powered by either the M2 or M2 Pro chip, the 2023 version of the Mac Mini retains the same overall design but upgrades numerous specs, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and (optionally) HDMI and ethernet, depending on how much you spend. 

Earlier this month, OpenAI said it was exploring ways to monetize its AI chatbot ChatGPT, giving users the opportunity to sign up for early access to “ChatGPT Professional.” Now, some users say they’ve been granted access to a pro tier which costs $42 a month.

OpenAI hasn’t confirmed this is an official test or made any announcements. We’ve contacted the company for more info, but in the meantime remember that features and pricing could change before ChatGPT Professional launches for real. As OpenAI said earlier this month: “Please keep in mind that this is an early experimental program that is subject to change, and we are not making paid pro access generally available at this time.”