Acast subscribers will soon get access to exclusive podcast groups on Facebook

Your favorite podcast might soon have an official, easy-to-find forum. Meta has teamed up with podcast giant Acast to offer exclusive Facebook Groups for podcasts using Acast+ paid subscriptions. Link your membership to your Facebook account and you’ll have a ready-made place to discuss the latest episode with fellow fans — you won’t have to hunt for a message board or use social network hashtags. You’ll also get exclusives like livestreams and Q&A sessions with show hosts.

The two companies didn’t say when subscriber groups would be available. Several podcasts are involved in a testing period, including the beauty show Fat Mascara. The price you’ll pay will likely vary, but podcasters can enable Acast+ for free. 

Meta has struggled to compete in the podcasting realm, and began shutting down services in early June. The deal keeps the company involved in the category, however. The social media company can benefit from the rise of paid podcasts (through increased use of its services) without having to pour resources into creating or distributing content. This is the first time a podcast company is using Facebook’s new platform for Interoperable Subscriber Groups, but it might not be the last if Acast’s partnership proves successful.

Twitter wants writers to publish longform content with ‘Notes’

Twitter has finally shown off its long-rumored feature for long form writing. The company confirmed that it’s beginning to test a new “Notes” feature, which will allow writers to publish freeform content on Twitter without a character limit.

Notes are essentially blog posts that appear within Twitter without the typical limitations of a tweet. There are no character limits, and writers can embed photos, videos and other tweets within a Note. Writers can also share their Notes via tweets, and their published Notes will appear on their Twitter profiles.

Notes could significantly change how writers interact with their followers, and give them more flexibility than the typical tweetstorm. In a Note announcing the launch, Twitter’s editorial director Rembert Browne wrote that Notes are meant to give writers an alternative to the lengthy threads without having to publish writing elsewhere and share it back to Twitter. “Since the company’s earliest days, writers have depended on Twitter to share their work, get noticed, be read, create conversation — everything but the actual writing,” Browne wrote. “With Notes, the goal is to fill in that missing piece and help writers find whatever type of success they desire.”

For now, the feature is available to a “small group of writers” from Canada, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States, though the company says it will eventually expand the test group as it gathers feedback. Notes is part of a broader push by Twitter to build features for writers. With the change, the company is also bringing Revue, the newsletter company it acquired last year, into its new “Twitter Write” group, which encompasses notes and newsletters. So far, it’s unclear how Revue newsletters may be incorporated into Notes.

Facebook Pay is now Meta Pay, and hopes to be the metaverse’s digital wallet

Facebook Pay is becoming Meta Pay. Mark Zuckerberg announced the rebranding on Wednesday, calling the change a “first step” toward Meta creating a digital wallet for its vision of the metaverse. In the immediate future, the software won’t change too much. You can still use it to send your friends and family members money over Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as to pay for purchases and donate to charitable causes.

Moving forward, however, Zuckerberg says he envisions a future where Meta Pay will function as a universal wallet for all the digital items you buy or create in the metaverse. “Proof of ownership will be important, especially if you want to take some of these items with you across different services,” he said. “Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you’ve bought should be right there.”

Put another way, Zuckerberg hopes that Meta Pay becomes the de-facto wallet of the metaverse. He admits the kind of interoperability he’s describing is a long way away but claims it would “deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators.” It almost goes without saying, but Meta would almost certainly be the greatest beneficiary of the ecosystem Zuckerberg describes. The company recently confirmed it’s taking a nearly 48 percent cut from digital asset sales in Horizon Worlds. A wallet app is another way for the company to earn money on the back of metaverse creators.

Juul’s e-cigarettes could be banned from sale in the US

The Food and Drug Administration could be set to bring the hammer down on vape pen maker Juul. The agency is preparing to order it to stop selling e-cigarettes in the US and the decision could come as soon as today, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Along with other e-cigarette makers, Juul was required to submit its products to the FDA for review in 2020. The agency has been looking into the possible benefits of vaping as an alternative to cigarettes, but the popularity of the products among young people has caused concern. The FDA has already cleared products from Juul’s rivals, Reynolds American (which is behind the Vuse brand) and NJOY.

The FDA has been scrutinizing Juul for several years. It seized marketing materials from the company for review in 2018 over concerns about underage vaping. In 2019, the FDA criticized the company for telling students its products were “totally safe” after it accused Juul of undermining efforts to clamp down on teen vaping.

The agency limited sales of flavored e-cigarettes in 2018 and banned several variants outright in early 2020 in an attempt to reduce the appeal of vaping among teens. Juul pre-empted that ban (perhaps in an attempt to get in the good graces of regulators and the public) when it stopped sales of mint- and fruit-flavored vape pods in 2019.

Several states have sued Juul, alleging that it targeted minors with marketing. It paid $40 million to settle a North Carolina suit in 2021, and a $22.5 million settlement in Washington state earlier this year. The Federal Trade Commission has also reportedly looked into Juul’s marketing tactics.

Juul will have the option of appealing a federal ban on sales of its products, if the FDA does take that step, or challenging it in court. Some observers have suggested that the company may ask for a stay while the agency reviews a version of the vape pen that has age verification tech. Engadget has contacted Juul for comment.

A blanket ban would likely prove devastating for Juul’s business. The WSJ notes that the vast majority of the company’s revenue comes from the US. Juul became the top e-cigarette brand in the country a few years ago, but sales have dropped and it’s now said to be in second place in the US market behind Vuse.

Meanwhile, the FDA is aiming to remove nearly all nicotine from cigarettes to make them less addictive. That could lead to millions of smokers switching to vaping or giving up smoking entirely.

Researchers built a low-cost camera system that recreates sound from vibrations

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a camera system that can seemingly detect sound vibrations with a level of precision that makes it possible to recreate the audio without inference or a microphone. A team from CMU’s School of Computer Science’s Robotics Institute (RI) built the system, which has two cameras and a laser. It can detect “high-speed, low-amplitude surface vibrations” that the human eye can’t see, the university said in a press release.

The system features regular cameras rather than high-speed ones used in previous research, which should lower the cost. “We’ve made the optical microphone much more practical and usable,” Srinivasa Narasimhan, an RI professor and head of the Illumination and Imaging Laboratory, said. “We’ve made the quality better while bringing the cost down.”

An algorithm compares speckle patterns captured by a rolling shutter and a global shutter. It uses the differences between the patterns to calculate the vibrations and recreate the audio. A speckle pattern (which is created by the laser in this case) refers to the behavior of coherent light in space after it’s reflected off of a rough surface. That behavior changes as the surface vibrates. The rolling shutter rapidly scans an image from one end to the other, while a global shutter captures an entire image at the same time. 

“This system pushes the boundary of what can be done with computer vision,” assistant professor Matthew O’Toole, a co-author of a paper on the system, said. “This is a new mechanism to capture high speed and tiny vibrations, and presents a new area of research.”

The researchers say they were able to isolate the audio of guitars that were being played simultaneously. They claim that the system was able to observe a bag of chips, and use vibrations from that to reconstruct audio being emitted by a nearby speaker with higher fidelity than previous optical microphone approaches.

There are a lot of potential applications for this tech. The researchers suggest, for instance, that the system could monitor vibrations from machines in a factory to look for signs of problems. Sound engineers could also isolate the sound from an instrument to improve the mix. In essence, it could help eliminate ambient noise from audio recordings.

Polestar adds Apple CarPlay support to its EVs

Polestar promised Apple CarPlay support for its EVs two years ago, and it’s finally delivering. As The Vergeexplains, the car brand has released an over-the-air update for the Polestar 2 that makes CarPlay available on the Android Automotive-based sedan. If you’d rather use Apple Maps instead of Google Maps or prefer to talk to Siri in lieu of Google Assistant, you now have that choice as long as you connect your iPhone.

In 2020, the automaker expected to deliver a CarPlay update in January 2021. It’s not clear what prompted the delay (Polestar cited “various factors” last fall), but the wait isn’t completely surprising. Android Automotive is built around Google’s operating system, and often its services. iPhone support was always going to be a lower priority, particularly when you don’t need an Android phone to use Polestar’s built-in functionality.

You still can’t find CarPlay on numerous other Android Automotive cars, including newer Volvo models as well as Rivian’s R1T. You won’t have to wait long in some cases, though. Volvo expects to add the interface within weeks, and it will eventually support iOS 16’s next-gen CarPlay interface. In that sense, Polestar is just a vanguard for its sibling brand.

Brave’s new tool lets you create and share your own search rankings

If you’re concerned that the usual web search engines might be biased, don’t worry — Brave thinks it can help. The company has introduced a beta Goggles feature for Brave Search (itself no longer a beta) that lets anyone set their own criteria for search rankings. You can refine a “politics” query to shift the focus to blogs instead of major news outlets, for instance.

You can create, modify or use others’ rankings just by running a search and tapping the “Goggles” button. You won’t necessarily have to spend time fine-tuning your results, then. A community could also share Goggles to more consistently surface the sites it uses most often.

Brave is pitching the tool as a foil to the algorithms Google and Microsoft’s Bing use to prioritize some search results while downplaying others. Those more dominant search providers say they’re focusing on trustworthy sources of information and otherwise helping users find useful content, but Brave contends that Goggles can help counter biases inherent to its larger competitors’ technology.

The feature may have both positives and pitfalls as a result. While this could help you more easily find smaller sites or differing opinions that frequently get buried in conventional search results, it might also reinforce thought bubbles where you only see content that agrees with your existing views. As with the rest of the internet, you may have to use Goggles judiciously to avoid creating an echo chamber.

You can pay for your Lyft ride with cash now

Ridesharing isn’t typically viable in the US if you want to pay with cash, but that won’t be a problem now that Lyft has introduced an option to pay for rides using cash. Visit 35,000-plus stores like Walmart, ACE Cash Express and Kroger and you can present a barcode or ID number to turn physical money into a balance accessible through the Lyft app or website. You’ll have to scan approved identification after requesting your first ride.

You’ll need to add at least $30 whenever you contribute to the balance. Your transportation options will also be limited if you go cash-only. You have to attach a credit card or another payment option to your account if you want to hire a bike or scooter.

Lyft pitches the feature as a way to democratize rideshare services. About 7.1 million US households either had no bank accounts or only limited access to conventional financial services as of 2019, according to FDIC data, and that frequently affected communities of color. The cash option lets those unbanked people request on-demand rides without paying for cabs. We’d add that this could help if you’re uncomfortable with linking payment cards to transportation services like this.

The move might give Lyft an edge in the country. Its rival Uber lets American riders use a balance to pay for trips, but they currently have to load funds using payment cards, PayPal and Venmo. For now, Lyft is your only major choice if you’d rather pay with paper.