Twitter’s edit button finally debuts in the United States, but you’ll have to pay for it

A lot more people will soon be able to do what was once unthinkable: edit tweets. Twitter has begun to roll out its new tweet-editing feature to Twitter Blue subscribers in the United States. The expansion follows a launch in Canada, New Zealand and Au…

Fast Company returns after attack that saw obscene Apple News alerts pushed to readers

Fast Company’s website finally came back online eight days after the publication took it down due to a cyberattack. The business publication was initially hacked on September 25th, but it wasn’t until the second security breach on September 27th that it had to take drastic measures to contain the situation. If you’ll recall, Apple News users who are subscribed to Fast Company received a couple of obscene push notifications with racial slurs in late September. The bad actors had also defaced the website with obscene and racist messages and posted details on how they were able to infiltrate the publication. 

They said that Fast Company used an easy-to-crack password for its WordPress CMS and had re-used it for its other accounts. From there, they were able to grab the company’s Apple News API keys, as well as authentication tokens that gave them access to employee names, email addresses and IPs. In a forum the hackers linked to on the defaced website, a user called “Thrax” posted a database dump with 6,737 employee records that include mails, password hashes for some of them and unpublished drafts, among other details.

No customer or advertiser information was exposed as a result of the hack, though, Fast Company editor-in-chief Brendan Vaughan wrote in a new post announcing that the publication is back. The main Fast Company website, its corporate site Mansueto.com and its sister site Inc.com remained offline for eight days while an investigation was being conducted. During that period, the publication posted content on other platforms, such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Medium. Vaughan didn’t go into details with the result of the probe, other than saying that no customer or advertiser data was compromised and that the publication has “taken steps to safeguard against further attacks.”

The Internet Archive is building a library of amateur radio broadcasts

The Internet Archive is aiming to build up a new library of old content. It’s expanding beyond Flash games and animations, movies, books and (of course) snapshots of websites with the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications (DLARC). This particular archive, which will be led by tech historian Kay Savetz, will include amateur radio broadcasts and digital material from the early days of the internet.

Savetz told Gizmodo that his remit includes just about any kind of digital communications from the 1970s until the early 1990s. While the preservation project focuses on amateur radio recordings, it may also feature early podcasts, digital newsletters, photos, videos and, yes, websites. There are plans to digitize print materials as well. “I want the obscure stuff, the locally-produced ham radio newsletters or the smaller magazines, that sort of thing,” Savetz said.

The DLARC team, which has funding from the Amateur Radio Digital Communications Foundation, is looking for help to build out the collection. It’s seeking “partners and contributors with troves of ham radio, amateur radio, and early digital communications-related books, magazines, documents, catalogs, manuals, videos, software, personal archives and other historical records collections, no matter how big or small.” It added that every collection in the library will be accessible to everyone. The project will also offer a discovery portal designed for education and research use cases.

Facebook is letting users choose which posts they want to see more of

With profits shrinking of late, Facebook has been shutting down unpopular apps and focusing on its core services. To that end, it’s updating the primary Facebook Feed to let users see fewer or more posts from friends, groups and pages. That will in turn let it incorporate user feedback into Feed rankings, “making our artificial intelligence systems smarter and more responsive,” it said in a blog post. 

As it stands now, the Facebook app only lets you hide posts from people you follow or those it suggests. Now, for friends or recommended posts, a new setting will allow you to “show more” or “show less” of that content. Doing so will not only change your feed content, but improve its AI system used for Feed rankings.

It’ll “periodically” show the setting on posts in Feed, and you’ll soon be able to access a similar setting on every post by tapping on the three-dot menu at the top right. It’s also testing the feature in its short video Reels feature.

Facebook wants users to help improve AI feed recommendations
Facebook

In addition, Facebook is testing a global menu to customize the number of posts you see from Friends and family; Groups; and Pages and public figures. As shown in the image above, you’ll be able to select “Normal,” “Show more” or “Show less” of that content. That will appear along with the current Favorites, Snooze, Unfollow and Reconnect in the Feed Preferences.

With the changes, Facebook appears to be addressing one of the main user complaints: too many posts that they don’t want to see. Considering the number of ads in Feed (with more coming to Instagram and Reels as well), parent Meta no doubt wants to make sure users are happy with other content. 

Instagram will shove ads into more parts of the app

Meta’s quarterly revenue dipped for the first time ever in the second quarter. It’s looking to make those numbers go back up and keep smiles on investors’ faces. One of the strategies it’s employing to do that is by attempting to squeeze more money out of Instagram. As such, it will shove ads into more areas of the app, namely the Explore feed as well as the feed of posts from a user’s profile.

Brands can now place ads in the Explore feed, but profile feed ads are still in the testing phase. The company will also offer some creators the chance to earn a cut of revenue from ads that are displayed in their profile feeds.

Meta announced a slew of other updates for its advertising products. Some of those will impact Instagram. For one thing, the company will try out augmented reality ads in both the feed and Stories. Meta suggests that brands might use these to let people test virtual furniture in their home or get a closer look at a car.

Augmented reality ad in Instagram Reels
Meta

In addition, the company is experimenting with new formats for ads in Facebook and Instagram Reels. These include a “post-loop” format — skippable ads lasting between four and 10 seconds that play after a reel. After the ad finishes, the reel will play again. The company is also testing image carousel ads, which you may start to see at the bottom of Facebook Reels starting today. In addition, brands will have access to a free library of music to use in Reels ads.

As for how many ads you’ll actually see, that may be different for each person. You may or may not see more of them, but they’ll at least pop up in places where they weren’t present before. “The number of ads across the platform varies based on how people use Instagram,” an Instagram spokesperson told Engadget. “We closely monitor people’s sentiment — both for ads and overall commerciality.”

It doesn’t seem that Meta is considering the sentiment that some people don’t want to see ads at all. The company swiftly took action against an unofficial, ad-free Instagram client that popped up last week.

Update, 5PM ET: This post originally stated that ads would appear in a profile’s grid view. They don’t show up there, but they can appear in the profile feed.

‘Dead Space’ remake trailer shows a twist on familiar gameplay

Motive and EA have finally shared a gameplay trailer for their long-expectedDead Space remake. To an extent, the clip shows what you’d expect. It’s a familiar retelling of Isaac Clarke’s horror-filled mission to the mining ship USG Ishimura, but with much-improved visuals and sounds that make better use of modern hardware. You’re still severing the limbs of Necromorphs and floating through zero-gravity segments, just with eerie volumetric lighting and more realistic, context-sensitive sounds.

It’s not quite a rehash, thankfully. Isaac is no longer silent like he was in the 2008 original, and there’s a better feel for a story that involves the battle for sanity and discovering the fate of Isaac’s girlfriend Nicole. To some extent, the remake is an opportunity to refine Dead Space rather than simply profiting from a well-known name.

The revived Dead Space will be released January 27th, 2023 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. While it isn’t a brand new game like fans might want, this preview suggests Motive is at least delivering what you’d expect from a remake: a modernization of graphics and gameplay that’s still true to the experience that drew people in the first time around.

CD Projekt Red is working on a ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ follow-up and several new Witcher games

CD Projekt Red may be much busier than you expect. The developer has shared a long-term roadmap that elaborates and expands on its plans. To start, a project codenamed “Orion” is effectively a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 that will “further develop the potential” of the sci-fi franchise. It’s in development by CDPR’s teams in Boston and Vancouver.

And while it’s no secret that there’s a new Unreal Engine 5-based The Witcher game in the works (it entered pre-production this spring), it’s really just the start of a new trilogy. You might not have to wait long to see the story reach its conclusion, either. CDPR hopes to release all three games within a six-year span, with the first (codenamed “Polaris”) serving as a technology foundation for the remaining two.

Other titles include “Sirius,” a The Witcher spinoff with solo and multiplayer elements aimed at a “broader audience.” It’s developed by The Flame and the Flood studio The Molasses Flood. Another project, “Canis Majoris,” is a “full-fledged” Witcher universe game built by an outside developer using UE5. And no, CDPR won’t be stuck making Cyberpunk and Witcher games for all eternity. “Hadar” will be new, from-scratch universe. It’s still in the extremely early stages of development (conceptual work only began in 2021), so it’s likely years away.

Regardless of what you play, you should expect online gameplay to become a staple feature. In its roadmap presentation, CDPR said “most” of its new games will have a multiplayer component. The company was shy on what this will entail.

CDPR isn’t shy about the reasons for the expansion. The wider catalog and cooperation with outside developers will help it “reach new consumers” while maintaining three lasting franchises. If all goes well, a producer best known for rare, single player-focused releases will offer a steady stream of games that help it become more of a household name akin to Activision Blizzard and Ubisoft — in size, if hopefully not in quality.

Twitter finally starts rolling out the edit button, but US users will have to wait

After years of users begging Twitter for an edit button, they’re finally getting their wish. The company is rolling out the long-awaited feature in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but only for Twitter Blue subscribers. The option isn’t available in the US just yet, but Twitter says users there will get access soon. It plans to offer the feature in other markets too.

Twitter Blue subscribers who send a tweet and realize they made a typo or two will have 30 minutes to make edits. They can make changes up to five times during that time frame. For the sake of transparency, edited tweets have a modified timestamp that reads “last edited” and the time of the last change. Click the timestamp and you’ll see the entire edit history.

Twitter said in April that it was at long last starting to test an edit button. There were indications early on that the feature could include an edit history screen. At the beginning of September, Twitter said that it had, in fact, created an edit button. It published a test tweet at the end of the month and, a few days later, the edit button is going out into the wild.

The company is still technically testing the feature — it’ll be available as part of the Labs section of the $5 per month Twitter Blue service. Moreover, you can only edit original tweets and quote tweets, according to a support page. Many types of tweets cannot be edited, such as threads, replies, retweets, pinned tweets, Super Follow tweets and ones you draft on third-party apps.

Still, it’s a start. Twitter’s approach to the edit button makes sense in terms of keeping things as transparent as possible. It’s easy to imagine news organizations making changes to a breaking news tweet that’s going viral as clarifications or more details come in. Maybe if Twitter opens up the edit button to everyone, they’ll be able to fix innocuous typos like “sneak peak” without too much strife.