Thursday’s top tech news: PlayStation soars as Amazon’s drones struggle to get off the ground

I’ve heard people joke that Google only has a couple of successful businesses, primarily advertising. But it may have found another hit: insuring other companies against their workers’ potentially pricey medical care.

The Information is reporting that its healthcare company, Verily, more than doubled its revenue to become the biggest Alphabet subsidiary after Google proper — and that its health insurance business, Granular, is the biggest contributor to that growth. Granular’s revenue “rose nearly sixfold through the first nine months of last year to $151 million, from $27 million a year earlier,” writes The Information.

Twitter says it’s cutting off free access to its third-party API next week, replacing it with a “paid basic tier” for an unspecified price on February 9th. The news potentially affects a lot of Twitter services, and one of them is bots — not the spammer armies that new owner Elon Musk claims he’s been purging but the myriad automated accounts posting cute animals, fictional character quotes, and accessibility aids through Twitter’s API. While Twitter has left users in the dark about the details of its coming change, many bot creators have resigned themselves to shutting down.

“My read of those tweets from Twitter is that it’s going to stop working,” says V Buckenham of their service Cheap Bots Done Quick. Launched in 2015, Cheap Bots Done Quick is a go-to bot-making tool for people who aren’t used to working with Twitter’s API, currently powering about 54,000 Twitter bot accounts. But next week, unless Twitter backpedals on its announcement, Buckenham expects it will simply break.

If you’re sick of the videos TikTok is serving up on the For You page, there may soon be a way to hit reset.

The company is testing a new feature called Refresh, according to spokesperson Jamie Favazza, that will surface videos based how you use the app after you press the button. The feature could be useful if you are getting too much of the same thing on your feeds or if (according to TikTok) the videos being served aren’t relevant or entertaining anymore. The test, which will begin in the next few days, will only be available to a small number of users at this time.

Microsoft is encouraging developers to start using Microsoft Store Ads, which allow people and companies to boost their app’s placement in the Windows store. The company writes in its blog that the ads are “designed to help developers grow their business by getting their apps or games in front of the right customers at the right time, and to inspire Microsoft Store customers with great content,” but similar systems for iOS and Android haven’t always provided the best experience.

Microsoft Store Ads have been a long time coming — the company announced it was going to start piloting them in May 2022 and posted about them rolling out on its advertising blog in January. But now, it’s posting about them on its developer blog, telling devs they can use the system to promote app launches or updates. According to its website, the ads will show up “in the Microsoft Store app on Windows within search results and the Apps and Gaming tabs.” You can see what that can look like below:

Apple’s iPhone 14 now has a new rival: the Samsung Galaxy 23. Announced during the company’s recent Unpacked event alongside a slate of new Galaxy Books, the S23 series is available for preorder starting this week with a street date of February 17th. The new phones arrive with faster performance, bigger batteries, and updated selfie cameras, with the Ultra offering an even higher resolution camera than its predecessor.

But before you throw down upwards of $799 on a preorder, you may want to know how Samsung’s forthcoming smartphones measure up to Apple’s latest and greatest handsets. While both lineups include phones with impressive specs, there are a couple of key differences to be aware of.

Power outages hit hundreds of thousands of Texans during a winter storm this week, bringing to mind deadly blackouts the state suffered in a 2021 cold spell. More than 400,000 customers had no electricity today as the icy storm that started Monday entered its final stretch.

This week’s blackouts, however, played out much differently than the 2021 disaster. And fortunately, the ice storm is forecast to finally ease up today. But it was another reminder of the work left to do to shore up Texas’ fragile grid.

DIY home security company SimpliSafe is beta testing a new service that lets its agents both see inside your home and talk with potential intruders during an alarm event. SimpliSafe’s live guard protection service relies on a new AI-powered security camera. If the camera detects human motion while the system is armed, it can trigger the alarm and open a live feed for a monitoring agent to see and speak with whoever set it off — and hopefully scare them off.

The program will only work with SimpliSafe’s new Smart Alarm Wireless Indoor Security Camera, paired with a SimpliSafe base station and Interactive Monitoring monthly plan. The Smart Alarm camera is an AI-enabled, battery-powered indoor security camera with a PIR motion sensor and a built-in siren.

Getting bored staying indoors because it’s too cold to venture outside? We feel you, which is why we found some good deals today that’ll keep you entertained while inside. First up, Amazon is discounting the new green and blue versions of its latest Kindle Paperwhite. Both are on sale with ads and 16GB of storage for $109.99 ($40 off), or you can buy them without ads for $129.99 ($40 off). The new color configurations were announced just yesterday, yet today’s discount is only $10 shy of the Paperwhite’s lowest price to date.

This is the same Paperwhite we reviewed (and loved) upon its debut in late 2021 — just a little more colorful. It’s got the same IPX8 waterproofing and months-long battery life, allowing you to read uninterrupted for long stretches of time. Its sharp 300ppi display is also easy to read during the day, while the adjustable color temperature makes nighttime reading just as simple. Admittedly, it’s a bit harder to hold with one hand than the smaller Kindle, but it’s still a lightweight e-reader you can lug just about anywhere. Read our review.

Last October, CNET’s parent company, Red Ventures, held a cross-department meeting to discuss the AI writing software it had been building for months. The tool had been in testing internally ahead of public use on CNET, and Red Ventures’ early results revealed several potential issues.

The AI system was always faster than human writers at generating stories, the company found, but editing its work took much longer than editing a real staffer’s copy. The tool also had a tendency to write sentences that sounded plausible but were incorrect, and it was known to plagiarize language from the sources it was trained on. 

Twitter will no longer provide free access to the Twitter API from February 9th. As announced by the official Twitter Developer account late Wednesday night, Elon Musk’s social media hobby will stop supporting free access to the Twitter API and will instead provide a “paid basic tier.” Twitter hasn’t provided any information regarding pricing, but said that it will provide “more details on what you can expect next week.” 

“Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have sent over a trillion Tweets, with billions more every week,” said the Twitter Developer account. “Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us.”

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) demanded that Apple and Google “immediately” remove TikTok from their app stores in a letter addressed to the companies’ chief executives, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai, Thursday. 

Bennet’s push to restrict downloads of the app is just the latest in a series of mounting congressional actions to ban the embattled Chinese-owned app. Since January, Republicans and Democrats have been calling for either their colleagues or Biden administration officials to quickly impose stricter data collection restrictions or a nationwide ban on the app, citing its possible risks to US national security. 

Beta testers will be able to join Discord voice calls on a PS5 console in the US, Canada, Japan, and UK starting today. The integration allows PS5 owners to join Discord calls by linking accounts and then using the Discord mobile app to transfer calls to the PS5. Sony is also adding Variable Refresh Rate support for 1440p, alongside various dashboard improvements.

The Discord voice integration on PS5 appears seems similar to how Microsoft initially launched Discord support on the Xbox. Sony says you have to “use the Discord app on your mobile device or computer to get a Discord voice chat going on your PS5 console,” which means you won’t be able to directly access Discord servers on a PS5 without using a mobile device or your PC to transfer the call.

Sony wasn’t lying when it said the PlayStation 5 shortage was over earlier this month. Its latest earnings release has revealed that the console just had its strongest quarter yet, with 7.1 million PS5s shipped in the three months leading up to December 31st, 2022. That’s almost double the 3.9 million it sold in the same quarter the previous year. 

According to Sony’s earnings releases, the company has now shipped 32.1 million units of its latest generation console, which is in line with the 30 million lifetime sales figure it revealed at the beginning of January. It’s a big turnaround after production was hit hard by the global chip shortage, making it difficult for the company to keep up with demand for its new console throughout much of its two-year lifespan. “If you’re looking to purchase a PS5 console, you should now have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally,” Isabelle Tomatis, VP of brand, hardware, and peripherals at Sony Interactive Entertainment, said earlier this week.

It’s been nearly a decade since Amazon’s Jeff Bezos promised us delivery drones, but they aren’t off to a particularly impressive start. Roughly a month after Amazon Prime Air made its first deliveries in California and Texas, it’d served fewer than 10 households — and it’s already laid off more than half the employees at those locations.

That’s according to a pair of new reports at The Information and Business Insider, and Amazon isn’t denying it. Amazon spokesperson Maria Boschetti didn’t contest those numbers in an email to The Verge when we asked. But she also said that Prime Air is actually working to expand drone deliveries in both California and Texas, with the FAA’s approval.