Tag: previously
The iPhone 15 Pro probably may not feature solid-state buttons as previously rumored
If you’ve been following the Apple rumor mill since last year, you may recall the iPhone 15 Pro has been widely expected to feature a set of touch-sensitive solid-state buttons. It now looks like Apple won’t replace the iPhone’s physical buttons for at least another year. In a shareholder letter spotted by MacRumors, Apple supplier Cirrus Logic said “a new product that we mentioned in previous shareholder letters as being scheduled for introduction this fall is no longer expected to come to market as planned.”
Cirrus is best known for producing a handful of components that go into the iPhone’s Taptic Engine. Apple is the firm’s largest customer, accounting for 79 percent of its revenue in 2022. In November, Cirrus told investors and analysts it was working on a new high-performance mixed-signal (HPMS) component (that’s the same category of part as the Tapic Engine), and that it would arrive in smartphones sometime in 2023. This week, Cirrus said it had “limited visibility” into the product’s future.
Reports suggesting the iPhone 15 Pro would feature a set of solid-state buttons originated from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said last fall the company was planning to replace the physical volume and power buttons on its next flagship phone with touch-sensitive buttons. Last month, Kuo revised his forecast, noting Apple had decided to change plans due to “unresolved technical issues before mass production.” If nothing else, the development is a reminder to treat smartphone leaks with skepticism, particularly those that circulate months and sometimes years in advance of a product’s announcement.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-iphone-15-pro-probably-may-not-feature-solid-state-buttons-as-previously-rumored-174416328.html?src=rss
Hear Dirty Projectors and Björk’s previously unreleased version of “On and Ever Onward”
From the Record Store Day reissue of Mount Wittenberg Orca
The post Hear Dirty Projectors and Björk’s previously unreleased version of “On and Ever Onward” appeared first on UNCUT.
The new Pokemon anime reveals a previously unseen, perfect little turtle creature
The new Ash-less Pokemon anime has started, and with it has come the introduction of a brand new pocket monster.
Pokemon Horizons: The Series is the new Pokemon anime that has started a brand new adventure with a fresh cast of characters, and the first episode has finally aired this week. The new protagonists Liko and Roy have been properly introduced to us, but interestingly, a new Pokemon has been too – a blue, crystalline turtle, that if you’ve been paying attention, you might just recognise. Kind of (thanks, Serebii).
You see, back in February The Pokemon Company revealed that Pokemon Scarlet and Violet would be receiving a two part DLC later this year. The second part, The Indigo Disk, will seemingly prominently feature a new Pokemon called Terapagos, a bigger turtle than the one seen in the anime, adorned with symbols of the various types across its back. These two Pokemon are obviously related, the smaller one in the anime presumably being the prevolution of the bigger one – or at the very least, a different form. We’ll likely learn more about the smaller turtle as more episodes release, or at the very least when the second part of the DLC launches.
Snapchat announces new music licensing deals, including with previously litigious SUISA
New Arthur Russell album of previously unreleased material – ‘Picture of Bunny Rabbit’
Ubisoft Pulls Out of E3 2023 After Previously Committing to the Show
Twitter is making even less from Twitter Blue than previously known
What do Cardi B, Tesla, former Trump White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, and MSNBC host Ali Velshi all have in common?
They’re all former subscribers to Twitter Blue, Twitter’s paid subscription plan, recently revamped by owner and CEO Elon Musk, which offers blue checkmarks to anyone who pays $8 per month (or $11 per month if subscribing through an iOS device). Yes, even Tesla, a company where Musk is also CEO, appears to have unsubscribed.
New Twitter Blue subscriber data released by online researcher Travis Brown highlights that just two months after Twitter relaunched the paid Twitter Blue tier on its platform, it appears subscription numbers may already be starting to stagnate.
Furthermore, a new report from journalist Steven Monacelli in Gizmodo highlights that a number of Twitter Blue verified users who have stopped subscribing to the platform yet their blue checkmark still remains active on their account. Some of these users who spoke to Monacelli canceled their subscriptions months ago, yet their account is still marked as subscribing to Twitter Blue even though they have not paid.
As Brown confirmed to me, those non-paying Twitter Blue users would be tracked as subscribers via the Twitter API, which is what the researcher uses to monitor subscription data. Brown noticed that some of the users reported on in the Gizmodo piece were among those who were finally unsubscribed in the latest data. Monacelli has also confirmed that there are users he spoke to that still have the Twitter Blue badge even after his report and Brown’s latest data release.
Over the past week, 26,319 Twitter users either unsubscribed or were removed from paid Twitter Blue plans according to Brown’s Feb. 12 data release. Some of these unsubscribed users include notable Twitter users, like rapper Cardi B, mentioned above. This would also mark the first time Twitter Blue experienced a decrease in subscribers as far as public tracking of this data goes.
There are some caveats to this tracked data, Brown tells me. Twitter sometimes removes active Twitter Blue users in order to verify them if they change their display name. Those users would usually appear as Twitter Blue subscribers once again. In addition, the only way for third-parties to track Twitter Blue subscriptions is through Twitter’s public API, and there’s a possibility that it sometimes misses new subscribers.
In addition, we now know via the Gizmodo report that some Twitter Blue users actually unsubscribe anywhere from weeks to months before actually being removed, so their cancellations may not be counted until some time later. With that being said, the most recent internal Twitter Blue subscriber data published in a report in The Information, found that Brown’s estimates were extremely close.
So, how many paying Twitter Blue subscribers does Twitter actually have? That previously mentioned report from The Information discovered that Twitter had 180,000 Twitter Blue subscribers in the U.S. as of mid-January, with an estimated total of 290,000 subscribers worldwide.
In 2021, the year before Musk acquired the company, Twitter generated over $5 billion in revenue. Ad revenue made up more than 90% of that amount. Since Musk’s takeover, half of Twitter’s top advertisers stopped running ads on the platform. Musk launched his version of Twitter Blue envisioning a subscription-based model that could help make up for those losses.
Based on the latest internal data, Twitter is pulling in just less than $28 million a year…if all of those 290,000 Twitter Blue subscribers were actually paying, which we now know they are not.
Twitter is making millions of dollars from previously banned accounts, report says
Twitter is making millions of dollars from just a handful of some of its most infamous users, according to a new report. New research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) estimates that Twitter “will generate up to $19 million a year in advertising revenue” from just 10 accounts that were once banned from the platform.
The report looked at the current engagement with 10 accounts that were previously banned for “ for “publishing hateful content and dangerous conspiracies.” The accounts were reinstated after Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The group includes a number of high-profile accounts associated with extremism and conspiracy theories, including those belonging to influencer Andrew Tate, Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, prominent antivaxxer Robert Malone and the Gateway Pundit.
In order to estimate their reach and engagement, CCDH analyzed nearly 10,000 tweets from these accounts during a 47-day period in December and January. According to their analysis, “on an average day, tweets from the ten accounts received a combined total of 54 million impressions,” they write. “Projecting this average across 365 days, the accounts can be expected to reach nearly 20 billion impressions over the course of a year.”
In order to determine how much ad revenue those impressions might generate for Twitter, CCDH says it created three new Twitter accounts that followed only the 10 users named in the report. The authors found that ads appeared about once every 6.7 tweets. Then, using data from analytics firm Brandwatch, which estimates that “Twitter ads cost an average of $6.46 per 1,000 impressions,” CCDH came up with “a total figure of up to $19 million in estimated annual ad revenues across the accounts.”
While the estimates aren’t a precise accounting of how much Twitter might be making from these users, it demonstrates how valuable a small number of highly polarizing accounts can be for the platform. It also underscores how much more Twitter stands to gain by bringing back even more controversial users.
All of the accounts named in the report were once permanently banned from twitter, but were reinstated after Musk said he would offer “general amnesty” to users who hadn’t broken the law. Twitter also recently announced plans to allow even more previously banned users to appeal their suspensions.
At the same time, Twitter’s advertising business has taken a major hit since Musk’s takeover. A number of high profile advertisers have pulled back from the platform, and revenue is down as much as 40 percent, according to reporting fromPlatformer.
The report also points out several instances when ads from prominent advertisers appeared adjacent to offensive and inflammatory posts from these users. For example, a Prime Video ad directly underneath a tweet from Andrew Anglin that states “the only career a woman is actually capable of on merit is prostitution.” The report also highlights an ad from the NFL, which appeared directly underneath a tweet misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.
“This work confirms that Twitter has been displaying ads next to every one of the toxic accounts we have investigated, despite the fact that the individuals behind them are known to promote hateful views and falsehoods,” CCDH writes.