In 2009, the world met the WikiReader, a single-purpose gadget that holds all 6.5 million articles on English Wikipedia, from the depopulation of cockroaches in post-Soviet states to the list of lists of lists.

Perhaps you are stranded on the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world without internet and you want to read about the 18th-century woman who convinced doctors she had given birth to rabbits. Or maybe the list of U.S. state dinosaurs. All you’d need are two AAA batteries and your trusty WikiReader.

The aesthetically unremarkable aughts gizmo measures 4 inches by 4 inches, with a resolution of 240 by 208 pixels. It has an e-ink display with a rather janky touchscreen that’s better fit for a stylus than a finger, and its outer body has only the WikiReader logo and three buttons for search, history, and random. It’s simple. Some might even say it’s perfect. And it’s been off the market since 2014, when parent company OpenMoko pulled the plug on WikiReader operations.

But the device didn’t really die, thanks to a highly-private and tremendously dedicated figure called Jack, who keeps the utility of the decade-old device alive. Jack sells SD cards with updated content for $34, or $29 for a digital download (without the new SD card, your WikiReader’s contents are totally outdated.) Jack initially developed a new SD card for 2015 content, and it took more than a year to get the Ubuntu environment set up and fix the Wikipedia download so it would process for the WikiReader. “It was taking 5-6 days to process the Wikipedia download into a WikiReader database. So each test cycle was a week,” Jack told Input in an email. “It was all very time-consuming.”

He keeps doing annual updates even though he sells “just a few a month.” The 2022 update has been available since July.

“Many buyers are elderly people or 50-somethings buying it for their 80-something fathers,” he said, adding that many avid WikiReader fans “do not use a computer or the internet (think 90-year-olds).” He continues, “You wouldn't think there is a market for this, but there is a small one. I've sold to the Philippines, U.K., and Australia.” He says some of his other buyers who want offline Wikipedia access for trips or airplanes. Other customers have been inmates who live in facilities that allow small electronic devices.

There’s a 189-person-strong WikiReader subreddit, and Jack believes he is the only person in the world who “makes the update and makes one that works and has all the articles (at least the articles that can be viewed on the WikiReader).” His SD cards are sold on eBay, Amazon, and jacksuniversal.com, which is plastered with the fitting tagline: “We specialize in everything WikiReader!”

To WikiReader owner Ryan Michael Moberly, constant Wikipedia access is crucial: “The grid is down, massive rolling blackouts, tornadoes, but I must know about the history of the horseshoe sandwich!” he jokes.

Though the WikiReader was not created by Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation — the nonprofit that maintains Wikipedia — put out a statement condoning the device upon its release in 2009. “Wikipedia content is freely licensed, allowing anyone to copy, modify, and re-use it for any purpose, including commercial uses,” wrote a Wikimedia Foundation representative in a public post. The official WikiReader web page states that “Socrates pondered more important things than bandwidth. So do you.”

gone but not forgotten

WikiReader is like so many of those late-aughts internet gadgets — relegated to dusty shelves or basement storage bins. Take, for instance, the Kin, a social networking device which Microsoft spent a billion dollars developing just for it to be taken off the market after two months due to poor sales. There was also the legendary Twitter Peek, a cyan-blue handheld device made for Twitter alone — which sounds more like a torture device. For a monthly fee of $8, you could get internet access... but just for Twitter.

The Twitter Peek was met with broad criticism (it’s on a slew of “worst product” lists). Not long after its failure to launch, Twitter Peek terminated service in January 2012, abandoning the users who paid $299 for “lifelong service.” Yikes. These days, the Twitter Peek graces the shelves of collectors — and the Museum of Failure. Perhaps one of the reasons that the Twitter Peek failed to pique interest is its horrifying user experience, where you have to click on a tweet to read more than the first few words, defeating the purpose of a site full of bite-sized posts.

But the remarkably still-present WikiReader stays relevant. I bought one on eBay a few months ago and I’ve been pulling it out on the subway when I start wondering something and need to scratch the itch. Unfortunately, I’m hooked. I’m a lost cause. This device has suddenly become indispensable to me. I’m spending less time scrolling Instagram and more time scrolling through the Wikipedia article on mondegreens. The online encyclopedia is great, but the offline encyclopedia is even better sometimes.

Olivia Swarthout has brought medieval art to the masses (460K Twitter followers and counting) but she’s not formally trained in medieval history or art.

A self-described “proprietress of weird medieval guys,” she shares little 15th-century snail cats, gun-carrying demons, and other oddly charming scenes from centuries-old art along with her not-so-serious modern-day commentary.

Swarthout (who recently asked followers for a fancam of 12th-century polymath Hildegard von Bingen, “for a friend”) is framing medieval art through a meme-y lens, making the Classics palatable and funny: medieval guys — they’re just like us! They examine things. They hug their friends. They hold eggs. They gamble in sunglasses. They eat poultry with pals. They even had ‘this isn’t what it looks like!’ moments, like one post showing a king peeking into a room to see the queen (crown still on) in bed with a dragon, which Swarthout captioned, "really? with the dragon?"

And her genuine passion for medieval history is infectious. Perhaps a doctor dog treating a sick cat is what we need in these trying times.

By day, Olivia Swarthout is a data scientist in London with an interest in environmental topics. But in her free time, she’s the queen of Middle Ages memes, and she spends a few hours a week perusing digital archives to find them. She likes the British Library’s collections because you can search by keyword, but she also uses resources from the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Morgan Library in New York, the National Library of France, and a slew of others. “I’ll look through whole manuscripts online and get totally lost in them. There are all these really cool bits of art,” she told me over the phone.

Swarthout, 22, grew up in Montana until her parents packed up and moved to Germany when she was 10, after receiving German citizenship that her Jewish ancestors lost before WW2. She went to Scotland to study statistics at the University of Glasgow, graduating in 2022 with a thesis examining the statistical prevalence of frogs and toads of the U.K. — a natural extension of her long-running fixation on frogs. “There’s something inherently appealing about creatures that are ugly in a charming or cute way. I look at medieval art in the same way.” She speaks English and German and is “thinking about learning Medieval Latin” (of course she is).

She’s maintained similar types of gimmick accounts in the past, but none captured the internet like @WeirdMedieval, which she started in April while sitting in the city of Glasgow’s Mitchell Library deriving equations before her final exams. (“I go there because I love the funky carpets,” she says.)

“There’s something inherently appealing about creatures that are ugly in a charming or cute way.”

“I was looking for an escape from the technical and mathematical work that was piled on me, so I decided to take a break, and I flip through some medieval manuscripts as a mental cleanse. I didn’t have the intention of doing anything with them, but I got lost in the art. I was like, ‘Oh, these people were really funny.’” Like they always say, nothing takes your mind off work like a thousand-year-old painting of a bird with two dozen eyes.

Within four months and a few hundred medieval guys, she’s become one of the internet’s most conspicuous medieval scholars. “It gives me pause when posting to know that the president of Chile, a recent follower, will see this weird medieval guy,” she says. And she was particularly starstruck when the lead singer of the Mountain Goats, her favorite band since high school, professed himself a weird medieval guys fan.

Her identity isn’t exactly a secret, but she’s also not particularly forthcoming online about who she is. She just prefers to focus her content on the medieval guys, though people have long wondered who procures the startling scenes. “I think people expect someone male, in his mid-thirties, who wears a tweed jacket with elbow patches,” Swarthout told me over the phone. Instead, she’s a Tumblr girl. “I was there for the heyday, from like 2012 to 2016, when it was absolutely insane — no adults, no brands, just a bunch of teens bonding over our obsessions to an unhealthy extent. That was a big part of my upbringing and sense of humor,” she says. Her weird medieval guys curation is born of nostalgia for an escapist internet, the “online corners that used to feel more isolated and self-contained.”

She’s happy to join Twitter’s class of relatively wholesome gimmick accounts — like Cats being weird little guys, Gators Daily, Crazy ass moments in American politics (and Italian politics too) — which eschew viral trends for long-running, hyperspecific content.

Swarthout is adamant that the medieval period isn’t boring. She’s also passionate about boosting middle ages PR. “They weren’t stupid back then!” she says. “There’s a pretty well-established movement among medieval scholars to push back against terms like ‘Dark Ages’ which falsely imply the Middle Ages had less knowledge and study compared to before. After the Middle Ages, there was a big revival of Roman and Greek aesthetics that went along with a trend toward global empires, which came at the expense of the Middle Ages’ reputation.”

Even without sweeping empires, the Middle Ages had impressive art and culture and literacy. And now, a generation centuries younger can appreciate it in a whole new way.

“I didn’t know very much about the Middle Ages before, but collecting pictures of the weird guys as if they’re Pokémon has led me to all the history that’s behind them,” said Anna, a high schooler from California who follows @WeirdMedieval.

Swarthout also sells weird medieval stickers, like a fish with feet or a “mischief radish man,” and says she’s cooking up a few plans that she can’t announce yet. “I’m very excited.”

Tekken 8 may not have a release date yet, but Supreme is helping build anticipation with its latest collaboration. Following an outdoor collection with Nike ACG, the streetwear imprint is now pairing with designer Yohji Yamamoto Tekken-inspired apparel.

The upcoming drop splits its designs between the iconic fighting game, motocross, and other inspired graphics. The Tekken saga holds the Guinness World Record for longest running, cohesive storyline in a video game (not just fighting games), and Supreme’s apparel will tap into the biggest fans’ sentimentality.

Characters and motifs from the franchise are spread throughout a nylon bomber jacket, long puffer parka, knit sweaters, T-shirts, and sweatshirts. Some are one-offs with a main characters including Devil Kazuya, Kunimitsu, and King. Others are more graphic-heavy with all-over character collages. A skateboard deck rounds out the Tekken pieces with a reimagined logo and character roster graphic.

Suit up — If Tekken isn’t your thing, and you’re just here for the Yohji Yamamoto cosign, the rest of the collection features motocross-inspired and co-branded pieces. Vanson leather jackets with matching pants contribute to the biker vibe, complete with color-blocked panels and strategic branding. A striped Baja jacket offers a more laidback alternative with a hit of co-branding on the back, and T-shirts feature paint designs and pumpkin graphics just in time for spooky season.

For a more formal look, the duo adds a bold suit dressed in a bright paint motif, knit sweaters, and formal footwear. Dr. Martens even lends its 1461 3-Eye loafer to the collab. The black or white base is covered in the same paint graphics as the suit (and a T-shirt elsewhere in the capsule). A beanie serves as the primary accessory in black or beige with Yamamoto’s script as the main graphic.

A release is slated for 11 a.m. ET this Thursday, September 22, via Supreme’s usual Thursday drops. The collab will also arrive on September 24 to select Yohji Yamamoto stores. Diehard fans are sure to shell big bucks for the collection, but you can always revisit the series to indulge in the nostalgia.

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Sony took seven long years between the launch of the original PlayStation VR and now the proposed 2023 release of the PlayStation VR2, and apparently, the company is more than comfortable leaving its old headset in the dust.

Old PS VR games will not be playable on the new PS VR2, according to a comment from senior vice president of platform experience Hideaki Nishino on the Official PlayStation Podcast.

Too different — The issue, per official Sony brass, is that PS VR2 is just too different from the PS VR, what with its Quest 2-style inside-out tracking and newer, modern features. @nibellion on Twitter broke out Nishino’s specific explanation.

“PS VR games are not compatible with PS VR2, because PS VR2 is designed to deliver a truly next-generation VR experience,” Nishino explains. “PS VR2 has much more advanced features like all new controllers with haptic feedback and adaptive triggers...inside-out tracking, eye-tracking...3D audio...and 4K HDR, of course. This means developing games for PS VR2 requires a whole different approach than the original PS VR.”

Not a great excuse — PS VR2 is clearly a much more powerful, capable, and enjoyable VR experience if early hands-on impressions are any indication. And Sony definitely wants this headset to be more successful than its previous one, with big plans for exclusive games tied to its most valuable IP. But that’s not really an excuse for not offering backwards compatibility.

There are diehard PS VR fans who built up libraries of games they won’t be able to play without hauling out an outdated headset; there are developers who might not want to spend the resources porting an old game, and other ones who might do the work and charge even more for a game people already own. The benefits of developing for PS VR2 will clearly be big, but it really just seems like a decision was made to not spend the money to figure out backwards compatibility and hope customers won’t mind.

PlayStation doesn’t have a great track record with backward compatibility — you need a subscription to a game streaming service to play PS3 games on a PS5 — but this still seems like a decision that should have gone another way, or at least been explained better.

If you want to reduce your energy bill, they say you should turn off the lights and adjust your thermostat. Luxury giant LVMH is doing both — not to save money, but to ease up on its overall energy consumption.

LVMH Group — parent company of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany & Co., and more — announced a plan that would reduce its overall electricity use by 10 percent. The announcement comes shortly after the President of the French Republic addressed tensions in the electricity market this winter, calling on retailers and businesses to lead by example.

Dimming the lights — Between October 2022 and October 2023, the LVMH Group will start turning off the lights in its Maison stores between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. every day. The administrative offices will follow a lights-out rule at 9 p.m. In the industrial sites, administrative sites, and stores, the Group also plans to adjust the indoor temperatures by 1 degree Celsius warmer in winter and 1 degree Celsius cooler in summer, compared to the usual heating and air conditioning settings.

LVMH employees will also receive training on how to improve their personal energy consumption on and off the clock. Whether it’s turning off lights and screens, unplugging chargers and electric cars, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator, the company plans on managing consumption across the board.

Each of the Maisons will build off the overarching framework but have the option to adjust to their specific locations. Moët Hennessy, for example, plans to reduce its consumption by 15 percent in 2023. French employees are also encouraged to monitor and manage energy at home through the EcoWatt app.

Being this luxurious takes energy — According to the company’s announcement, LVMH’s current energy consumption in France is equivalent to a city of 150,000 inhabitants. By 2026, it plans to achieve a 100 percent supply of renewable or low-carbon energy across its workshops, stores, and offices. As of now, its French locations use 100 percent green electricity and 39 percent renewable energy globally.

Most companies turn to manufacturing, shipping, and resale to maintain their carbon footprint. Burberry followed a similar blueprint to LVMH when it received an SBTi approval by managing the impact of its operations and manufacturing, including the electricity and gas from its stores, manufacturing plants, and offices.

More investments throughout the energy transition will cover the sensors and meters needed to monitor the progress. The electricity reduction plan will apply to France first, and globally soon after.

The fully electric NS-1 camper is solar-powered and offers a reliable off-grid energy system.

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eBay is the most affordable resale platform, a recent study from VoucherCodes found. In analyzing the cost of this year’s most popular fashion items —including the Dior Saddlebag, Jacquemus Bambino bag, and Nike and Yeezy sneakers — VoucherCodes found a great disparity in pricing across resale platforms, with eBay being the least expensive.

Longtime resale buyers may not find this result surprising. Since launching in 1995, eBay has served as a reliable shopping platform for buying, bartering, and selling used goods. But in the past year alone, the resale market has exploded, especially as younger consumers seek cheaper and more sustainable shopping options. Newer apps like Depop and Poshmark have grown in popularity, while retail stores including Urban Outfitters and FWRD have launched their own thrifting programs.

Best bang for your buck — VoucheCodes’ study proves no resale platform is as efficient as the original. When analyzing product costs across three popular resale sites, including Depop, eBay, and Vinted, 12 out of 20 items compared were significantly cheaper on eBay. Only five items were found to be cheaper on Depop and three on Vinted. On the latter, a pair of high-top Nike Air Jordan sneakers sold for 315 percent more than on other sites.

eBay may not have the same frills as other resale platforms, but it’s kept up with the demands of consumers. The site has challenged secondhand streetwear marketplaces like GOAT and StockX with authentication features and smaller selling fees while tapping into metaverse hype by offering NFTs. And as an older platform, eBay boasts sellers with years of experience, as opposed to those on newer sites.

It’s worth noting VoucherCodes’ data, collected in August, is subject to change thanks to the volatility of the resale market. More companies are tapping into circular shopping by the day, and while good for the environment and consumers’ wallets, this could bind products (new and old) to their respective brands. Nike, Eddie Bauer, and Tommy Hilfiger are among some of the brands consolidating their products within their own resale hubs — cutting down the number of products available on traditional resale sites like eBay.

Shop away — For now, shoppers can direct their purchases to the classic resale site with little worry about getting the best deal. Real bargain hunters can look for additional coupon codes on VoucherCodes, a press release states, where promotions are offered for both new and secondhand items.

All the biggest shoe dogs are competing to see who can make the sneaker with the least environmental impact. Adidas and Allbirds are reigning champions with their joint Futurecraft.Footprint, which only emits 2.94kg of CO2e per pair. Asics, however, has just taken the title with the Gel-Lyte III CM 1.95, a shoe with the lowest carbon footprint ever achieved in a commercial sneaker.

The Gel-Lyte III CM 1.95 has been in the works for more than a decade. Researchers and developers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology partnered with Asics designers to create the blueprint. The midsole and sockliner use a carbon-negative foam, made in part from Septon Bio-series, a bio-based sugarcane polymer. Aligning with Asics’s goal of sourcing 100 percent of its polyester from recycled sources by 2030, the upper and mesh come from recycled and solution-dyed polyester.

Bands of tape wrap around the upper to provide a more sound structure as you walk or run. With almost 1 kg less CO2e emissions than the Futurecraft.Footprint, the sustainable Gel-Lyte III “marks a blueprint that can be iterated across all of our future products,” the brand said in its campaign video.

A for effort, Asics — Over the course of more than ten years, the Asics and MIT teams made hundreds of micro and macro changes to four major phases of the product: materials and manufacturing, transportation, use, and end-of-life. Throughout the manufacturing phase, the brand was able to utilize 100 percent renewable energy, further reducing its burden on the planet.

The idea behind the shoe stems from the notion that a sound mind and body are intrinsically linked. But in order for those elements to live in harmony, a sound Earth has to be factored in. Production of the average running shoe emits about 13 kg, or around 30 pounds, of carbon dioxide and takes about 30 to 40 years to decompose. Instead of creating a whole new silhouette, Asics sustainability expert Takao Arai told Sneaker Freaker that the brand chose to just revamp one of its most popular models, the Gel-Lyte III.

Asics plans to release the Gel-Lyte III CM 1.95 to the public late next year on its website. A closer look at the specs and aesthetics is sure to arrive before then, but Asics certainly has our attention now.

Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey raised some eyebrows when they first announced The Bitcoin Academy, an initiative meant to spread the good word of cryptocurrency through free online and in-person classes. The educational program was held at the Marcy Projects, a public housing complex located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, and the same location where Jay-Z grew up.

Classes ranged from “Careers in Crypto,” to “Crypto Scams & A Security Mindset,” and were limited exclusively to Marcy Project residents. Participants were given smartphones (if needed) and 100 MiFi devices were distributed with a one-year data plan. The courses, which were offered online and in-person, ran from June through September.

This timing coincided with a decline in the market, as Bitcoin itself has experienced a precipitous drop in value over the last year (about 54 percent) and multiple high-profile exchanges facilitating blockchain transactions have gone up in smoke. Testimonials from some of the students, as first reported by The Daily Beast, have questioned the aim of the project and whether or not crypto-related education is necessary given their economic conditions:

“How are you helping us if you’re asking us to put in five dollars, 10 dollars, and we’re all on fixed income?” Lydia Bryant, 57, told The Daily Beast.

The risk — Bryant also added that investments like crypto, as volatile as they can be, were riskier than say, purchasing “a real stock.” Aside from the inherent risk involved with the crypto market, the subject itself can be convoluted and difficult to make sense of, let alone digested well enough to make financial decisions. Another person noted that they “took the class but didn’t comprehend a lot.”

Not all of the testimonials were negative, and some students managed to take away enough from the summer sessions to transfer their own money into crypto. Upon completion of the program, residents were given $1,000 in crypto to use as they see fit — but this sum was viewed as negligible to other people, with one anonymous tenant pointing out that “[residents] are broke and struggling to live.”

Have, or have not — People like Jack Dorsey or Jay-Z — both of whom are billionaires — can withstand a sudden drop in the market, but small investors, like those at the Marcy Houses, would be significantly more impacted by the same kind of landslide.

The Bitcoin Academy claimed that this initial program is just the first step, and that another phase will be developed after reviewing feedback from those that completed it. Ultimately, reading through some of the responses makes one wonder if improving public infrastructure in and around a complex like The Marcy Houses would be a better use of resources.

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Brian Armstrong, the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, took to Twitter this week to announce a change in his company’s mobile app. The update will allow users to monitor how crypto-friendly their state’s congress members are based on public statements, in addition to providing a voter registration tool.

Congress members are assigned a score based on their “crypto sentiment” that ranges anywhere from “very positive,” to “very negative.” These scores are calculated based on data from the CryptoActionNetwork; media statements, legislative records and social media posts are taken into account.

In some cases, there isn’t enough publicly available data to assign a score, but for those that land somewhere on the scale, the legislative action portal allows users to contact their specific member of congress to “urge them to support pro-crypto policies.” Within Armstrong’s Twitter thread, he stated that one of the company’s end goals is to be able to assist pro-crypto politicians by “soliciting donations from the crypto community (in crypto).”

Gearing up for November — This feature arrives about a month after Coinbase put out a statement on its site, informing users about a broader crypto policy education initiative. As the 2022 midterm elections approach this November, and with increased regulatory scrutiny on the industry, it seems that Coinbase is hoping to drive community participation towards pro-crypto lawmakers.

Uberesque — The move is reminiscent of the efforts Uber and Lyft took to push the certification of Proposition 22, a piece of legislation that would’ve allowed the rideshare apps to classify contract workers as employees. In doing so, both companies could have avoided the need to guarantee their drivers’ wages and avoid providing them with healthcare benefits.

While Prop 22 did manage to secure 58 percent of the vote, the law was later determined unconstitutional. According to the LA Times, Uber and Lyft sunk more than $200 million into the policy effort. Around the time leading up to the vote, app-users were bombarded with inescapable push notifications as well as in-app notices that framed the policy as having a negative impact on its workforce.

Even though Coinbase’s policy effort is certainly less craven than Uber and Lyft’s push, the move to get political shows just how serious Coinbase (and assuredly other big players) are about keeping the crypto space free of regulatory scrutiny.

Last month, journalist Matt Cohen tweeted about his years-long Instagram group chat comprised of fellow Matt Cohens, which he calls “the most wholesome thing I’m a part of.”

In the chat, one Matt Cohen shared that he “had [his] first day of college classes today,” to which a Matt Cohen responded “Nice. Just started my first job. Real world is brutal enjoy college man.”

“Got married!” and “Just started my dream job!” chimed in fellow Matt Cohens. Another Matt Cohen announced he had launched a weed brand. The Matt Cohens, who have turned a shared name into an informal online club, planned a Zoom Happy Hour to catch up.

Your name clones usually lurk around you like a shadow. You get their junk mail, their emails, their Google results; glimpses of their intimate moments via their digital ephemera. They are strangers — but they don’t have to be.

Hello, our name is...

Around the world, people are maintaining multigenerational, global friendships with their same-named counterparts — Jake Wright, William Hodgson, Jordan DaSilva, and Josh Brown, to name a few. Sometimes, name twins commiserate about shared experiences: a sixteen-member Council of Aaron Johnson chat laments about the viral Key and Peele sketch that introduced the now-inescapable A-A-Ron nickname. Perhaps the best, or at least the most publicized, example of same-name camaraderie is the Josh Fight, when a group chat of Josh Swains organized an April 2021 meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska to fight for the “right” to the name. More than 900 Joshes showed up.

The Paul O’Sullivan Band has four members with one thing in common: the name Paul O’Sullivan. The quartet materialized after Baltimore Paul started “indiscriminately adding other Paul O’Sullivans on Facebook” and realized that a few different Paul O’Sullivans were musicians. These days, a quartet of Paul O’Sullivans, who hail form from Baltimore, Rotterdam, Manchester, and Pennsylvania, have come together to form a bona fide musical group.

Since its early days, the social internet has been lauded as a way for niche interest groups to connect, and name twins are no exception. A chat titled “Council of Bens” hosts 2500 Benjamins and Bens, and when one Ben caught wind of a similar group chat of Sydneys, he created a chat just for people named Sydney or Ben, which has been going strong for months. Chris Lenaghan added 7 other Chris Lenaghans to a chat, and soon he had same-name friends from Ohio to Belfast to Birmingham. In a Josh Kaplan group chat on Twitter, fellow Josh Kaplans use the chat to congratulate each other on achievements and awards: “A win for one JK is a win for all.”

Samuel Stewart, a 19-year-old Exeter student living in London, formed an Instagram chat of fellow Samuel Stewarts after reading about the Josh Fight. For a few weeks, they chatted about their days; older Sam Stewarts gave advice to younger Sam Stewerts. “They seemed to take me under their wing as if I were a younger version of them,” said a 19-year-old Sam Stewert when we talked on the phone. But the chat went awry when one Samuel Stewert started asking for money. “I felt a bond with the fellow Samuel Stewarts, but the name connection wasn’t quite strong enough for me to start giving away my college fund,” Sam told me.

“They seemed to take me under their wing as if I were a younger version of them.”

The chats aren’t strictly social — sometimes, they’re the most practical way to sort through same-name mixups. Will Packer, a strategist in New York, recently used the Will Packer chat to see if any of his name brothers had been contributing to his inbox clutter. “Any of you from Queensland?” he asked. “Someone tried to create a PlayStation account with my email.”

College student Nolen Young says, “I once created a Facebook Messenger group chat with everyone I could find on Facebook with my exact same name, spelling and all. There were only two other people. One of them considered giving me a job, and the other was an old man who started commenting on all my photos. I've messaged the former a few times because he owns every domain name and email I've ever wanted, and he keeps telling me I can only have them when he dies.”

It’s easier than ever to connect with same-name pals today, but the uncanny allure of name clones predates social media. Tahnee Gehm, an artist and animator based in L.A., organized a Web 1.0 catalog of Tahnees when she was a teenager.

“My dad was into computers and he got me a URL with my name,” she says. “I built an atrocious ‘90s website in 2001 as an eighth grader, and I started getting messages from girls all over the world named Tahnee.”

To catalog her new pen pals, she created a “Hall of Tahnees” webpage with a photo, bio, and hometown for every Tahnee she could find. The site’s “Tahnee-only area” was a “weird, unique club.” Once, she says, a singer from the band Hanson used the website to track down a girl named Tahnee he’d met at a concert. And the Tahnee bond has lasted decades: Tahnee Gehm has maintained a long-distance friendship with Tahneé Engelen since they were in high school. A few years ago, Gehm spent two weeks visiting Engelen in Paris, where she works as a neurobiologist.

“It’s nice to know that my name buddy is living my alternate life and absolutely killing it,” she told Input over the phone.

Sometimes, all it takes to spark a friendship is a similar email address. Seth Capron met an older Seth Capron after noticing their similar interests based on the emails he mistakenly received — soon, they realized their physical resemblance, too. These days, the older Seth jokes that he could pass on his career. “I was actually considering that as I move into retirement, the Younger could just carry on in my former role of Seth Capron, affordable housing consultant,” said “Seth the Older.”

Name buddies sometimes have a parasocial relationship with each other’s digital footprint. As a kid, Chris Lenaghan found online videos of a different Chris Lenaghan doing wheelies and “cool BMX shit” and immediately told all his friends that it was him in the videos. Years later, thanks to a big group chat, Chris Lenaghan met the BMX trickster, who he now calls “Ohio Chris,” and they ended up becoming close friends.

The chats don’t always advance beyond acquaintanceship, though. Evan Quigley, a University of Florida student, says that the Evan Quigley group chat is “more like a running joke than true friendship.” (The Evan Quigleys, bonded by name alone, proclaim unconditional public support for one another by commenting “way to go, Evan Quigley” on each other’s posts).

People with uncommon first names can bond over shared experiences — mispronunciations, playground taunts, and misspellings. More than a dozen Zaviens have come together via Snapchat. “None of us had ever talked to another Zavien,” one Zavien told Input. And a 14-member-strong “Council of Ethyns” chat, which started on Instagram in 2019, is mostly dedicated to tongue-in-cheek malice toward Ethans (with an “a”). They also just pop in the chat to say “love you Ethyn” a lot.

Still, the unlikely connections evoke nostalgia for a simpler internet, less cluttered with surveillance and corporate interests, where people went to meet new friends. Occasionally, wholesome chance online encounters remain. “Text door neighbors,” for example, or people with phone numbers one digit apart, show how easy it is to stumble upon an unlikely friend. Most notably in the wrong-number-gone-right stories, the duo Wanda and Jamal, whose viral wrong number ordeal has led to a six-year-long-and-counting Thanksgiving tradition, is now set to be featured in an upcoming Netflix movie.

It’s a big world out there — lots of Matt Cohens, more Alex Stewarts, and even more James Smiths — and your name buddies have never been easier to befriend. And I think that’s beautiful.

But just because we’re psychologically inclined to like our own name, doesn’t mean you’ll have a guaranteed connection with your name clones. Just ask Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt, the couple that tied the knot a year after they’d met when name-searching on Facebook and then, four years later, called off the marriage due to irreconcilable differences. It’s not all in a name.

The future of e-scooters is subscription-based, or at least that’s what Unagi thinks. The mobility company is heavily leaning into its existing subscription model for its new e-scooters, as evidenced by the reveal of its latest Model One Voyager and the cancellation of its Model Eleven, which was crowdfunded via Indiegogo.

Unagi unveiled the Model One Voyager, which is an upgraded version of the company’s first e-scooter. The company is calling the Model One Voyager its first smart scooter, and will offer it for a monthly fee of $67.

On the other hand, Unagi is sunsetting the work behind its Model Eleven project, which it previously dubbed “the smartest scooter on Earth.” Unagi explained in an email that it was seeing more success with its subscription model compared to traditional sales. The Model Eleven would have been too prohibitively expensive as a subscription model, so Unagi decided to scrap it altogether.

Scooter subscription — Unagi is heavily promoting its subscription model, which almost feels like a lease.

For those who are interested, the Model One Voyager has a decent amount of upgrades compared to its predecessor. The upcoming e-scooter will have a 14- to 20-mile range, higher torque at 32Nm, and more peak power at 1000W. Unagi also bumped up the acceleration and improved the braking for the Model One Voyager, which can also climb steeper hills for longer distances.

The Model One Voyager’s app compatibility makes it a “smart scooter,” since the app can give you scooter status and configuration details, app-based lock and unlock, and account management.

Externally, the Model One Voyager is not too much different from the Model One. It similarly has a one-click fold design, puncture proof tires, and is built with carbon fiber, magnesium, and aluminum. The only real visual difference is that the Voyager model is 8 millimeters wider at the base.

Back to square one — As for the Model Eleven being canceled, any backers can choose to either do a refund, a three-year subscription to the Model One Voyager where you’ll get it a month earlier than the official release, or two Voyager scooters to own. As a consolation prize, Unagi did note that some of the tech developed for Model Eleven would trickle down into future products.

As we mentioned, the Model One Voyager will come at a $67 per month subscription with a one-time $50 set-up fee. The subscription includes free shipping, free maintenance, and theft insurance. Thankfully, there’s still the option to just straight up buy the Model One Voyager for $1,190.

The Model One Voyager will be out in December and will be available in Deep Cobalt, Cool Mist, Matte Black and Latte. Unagi is also updating the Model One’s pricing model to $55 per month, now including theft insurance, whereas it was previously $49 a month with no theft insurance.

The subscription model may be working for Unagi, but we’re not entirely sold on the subscription mode, especially when there are cheaper options out there with similar specs. Maybe this is the future for e-scooters and Unagi is just setting the trend, but we can’t turn everything into a subscription, can we?

At yesterday’s Vivienne Tam New York Fashion Week show, her first in-person show since 2019, the designer showed off a collection full of flowing hems and patchwork knits — and blue chip NFT avatars.

Characters from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunks, CyberKongz, and Awkward Astronauts appeared sewn, printed, and even embroidered on apparel and accessories. “I wanted the creators of these NFTs, and even those unfamiliar with NFTs, to be excited and to think, ‘Wow, they’re alive!’” Tam said in a press release. Her show, according to its notes, was meant to “rewire the current fashion landscape.”

As models walked down the runway at Spring Studios, a range of pixels danced on a screen in the background. The imagery came courtesy of Scapes, a blockchain platform featuring 10,000 digital landscapes. Apes grinned on blazers; CryptoPunks dangled on earrings. Awkward Astronauts appeared on rainbow-colored dresses and tees, including the one worn by attendee Cameron Winklevoss.

Winklevoss, 41, partnered with Tam to bring the 2023 spring collection to life. Where the designer lacked metaverse expertise, he picked up: Winklevoss and his twin brother, Tyler, founded cryptocurrency exchange platform Gemini in 2014 with plans to build a decentralized metaverse. Gemini’s current offerings include Awkward Astronauts NFTs.

Input caught up with Cameron Winklevoss before the show to discuss how the fashion partnership came about, what his vision for the metaverse is, and how Mars Junction — the rock band he performs in with Tyler — plays into all this.

How did this project with Vivienne Tam come about?

Vivian made a dress with Awkward Astronauts, which is the NFT community that started on Nifty Gateway, which is Gemini’s NFT platform. And I think Tam knew a couple of people on our team. They had collaborated before, and she was excited about doing a crypto-inspired collection of dresses. We wanted to get crypto in front of different audiences.

What inspired you to enter the fashion world?

I think it’s important to get crypto around more people. It’s very much a global movement, so we have to get in front of as many people as possible. We’re going to onboard the next billion people into [the metaverse]. And NFTs are a fun, creative, accessible way for people to experience crypto and the future.

How would you describe the metaverse in broader terms for people who aren’t really in that realm?

The best way to think of [the metaverse] is if Web2 added a dimension with social. Web1 was very one-dimensional, more like sharing written information or like a postcard. Web2 added social elements and different connections. Web3 is much more immersive — I’m sure you’ve seen videos of people wearing Oculus Rifts, or you’ve seen the movie Ready Player One.

I hope it’s decentralized in the future and that users control their data and all their information. In Web2, we really handed that over to companies to hold, mine, and monetize for their gain or benefit.

What are your thoughts on [onetime nemesis] Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s version of the metaverse?

I think the metaverse that we’re trying to help enable and build is the decentralized one. That’s the one we’re focused on. There will be centralized ones, and people may choose to interact with one over the other, or a combination [of the two], but we’re really focused on that decentralized future.

Recently we’ve been seeing a lot of NFTs infiltrating spaces that aren't necessarily within the metaverse. Are you working on any other projects expanding their influence?

Gemini is powering Starbucks Odyssey, a Web3 loyalty program. I think we’ll launch later this fall. We don’t really know where it’s going to go and some of it won’t work, but some of it might.

Gemini laid off about 10 percent of its employees in June, citing “turbulent market conditions.” Do you think NFTs and crypto are faltering?

Well, there’s definitely been a downturn in markets in general, crypto included, but we’re still building for the future. I think NFTs are here to stay. We’re in the winter, but it is a season, and seasons change. We’ve been through winters many times before. We’re not strangers to the downturn. And so we’re just continuing to build.

On a different note, has being in your band Mars Junction informed any of your NFT or crypto decisions, or is it a separate venture?

We actually gave free NFT art to people who attended one of our shows, and it was kind of an experiment of proof of attendance. I suspect there will be a lot more of those projects and experiments coming in the future. I think even like a fashion show, instead of having a ticket stub, you could get an NFT that commemorates [the experience] and have art from it or something super-unique. That experience is also digital and could create a community.

But no NFT-related music for now.

I think there’s a lot of directions that can go in. We don’t know exactly where, but with Mars Junction, we’ve been experimenting. We’re probably going to write music in the next couple of months, and maybe if we drop it, we’ll drop it through NFTs. We’re still figuring it out.

There comes a time in every gigantic, influential social platform’s life when copying its smaller competition seems like a good idea. TikTok’s time is today.

The short-form video app’s new TikTok Now feature — a standalone app in some regions outside the U.S. according to the company — recreates the dual camera experience of BeReal for TikTok’s over 1 billion users.

Time to now — Like BeReal, TikTok Now uses the front and back camera to capture whatever you’re looking at at a random time during the day (with a notification that tells you it’s “Time to Now”). Posts from your friends are hidden until you post, and there is some concept of an “on time” just like BeReal.

The big wrinkle in TikTok’s version is that you can opt to share a 10-second video instead of a still photo, because TikTok is a video app after all. Otherwise TikTok Now seems to be pound-for-pound a BeReal clone, only one that lives in a Now tab to the right of your Home feed.

The tables have turned — There’s nothing particularly surprising about one platform cloning another in 2022, but it is interesting that TikTok, a fast-growing social media app and creative suite that’s inspired Facebook and Instagram to completely upend how they work, is the one doing the copying here.

“Time to Now”

Snapchat already has its own take on a BeReal-style feature, and it turns out Instagram has experimented with something similar called “IG Candid” in its journey to turn itself into TikTok with Reels.

Everyone thinks it might be able to steal some of BeReal’s thunder, an TikTok’s just finally grown enough to have a go at it, too.

Perhaps you’ve seen a video come across your timeline of someone — usually in peak physical shape — performing some sort of exercise that should alarm everyone in their immediate vicinity. Typically, these videos will be accompanied with a caption that reads something along the lines of: “What is bro training for??”

And if you haven’t seen one, well:

Shown above is Matthias Mckinnon, a fitness influencer that offers training and other workout-related resources to the masses, even if its hard to imagine, based on the absurd content found in his Instagram and TikTok feeds, someone like this offering banal advice on squat form. It all begs the question: What exactly is bro training for?

The simple answer to that question is: internet clout. A year ago, Mckinnon was posting relatively normal content. He was still lifting a formidable amount of weight, but it was just that — a strong man displaying his strength in conventional ways. These sorts of posts can get lost within a sea of content at the time, which were racking up modest engagement (at least when compared to his more recent, viral escapades).

The danger zone — Things shifted around the December 2021, when Mckinnon started uploading Santa-themed workouts. One in particular served as a jumping off point for the more dangerous content that he has become known for. During the video, Mckinnon is suspended in midair, and two other people (also dressed up like Santa) strike his abdomen with hammers.

A portion of Mckinnon’s videos will be preceded with a disclaimer (at least on TikTok) that users should not attempt to recreate any of the exercises. While captivating, and obviously impressive, these workouts probably pose a risk to anyone who might even think of doing something on a similar scale. But that danger hasn’t stopped a wave of other fitness content creators from integrating similar stunts into their brand.

Take itsdreamsworl, another influencer, who, based off the feats of strength he accomplishes in his videos, has me convinced he could actually challenge Thanos. The antics are certainly more tame than anything done by Mckinnon, but anything that would command the attention of an entire gym is pretty effective for courting an audience on social media.

Officialdflex, a contortionist based out of Atlanta also went viral last month by merging his flexibility with the weight room. The majority of his content was already shocking, he’s able to flex his limbs in ways very few people on the planet can do. Doing so in the confines of a gym has helped access a wider audience, though.

Viral stunts obviously aren’t new — Jackass has been around for ages. But the major difference between these stunts and early prank videos like Jackass, is that the latter was at least replicable by anyone off the street (if they had enough disregard for their own safety). On the other hand, something tells me Johnny Knoxville won’t be bench-pressing a couch anytime soon.

The viral spiral — Are these “workouts” dangerous? Yes. It doesn’t take an expert to surmise that one shouldn’t be lifting weights while also lifting outdoor furniture, no matter how strong they are. But the danger, in this case, kind of is the point. Whether we like to admit it or not, we love to watch people live “on the edge” even if the “edge” in this case is actually two huge tractor tires.

Call it schadenfreude, call it reality testing, it doesn’t really matter. Nothing can stop humans from risking life and limb for fame, and likewise, nothing can stop us from watching every second of it.

Walmart is making major investments in augmented reality. For its fifth AR innovation in the last six months, the retailer is giving customers a chance to test clothing on their own bodies virtually. The new feature, known as “Be Your Own Model,” is powered by artificial intelligence algorithms and machine learning models. These functions map out the user’s body, while neural networks translate the clothing’s color, size, length, and other attributes.

Once components like body parts, face, and hair have been detected, the system layers the clothing’s attributes on top so the user can try them on. It’s not just a flat 2D image, either; shadows and fabric movement will be factored in to create the most accurate rendering of how different outfits will look on your body.

See what clicks — Back in March, Walmart introduced a similar feature that allowed you to see a garment on over 50 models of various body types and heights. But if you want to be the model this time, the “Try It On” button will prompt you to take a new photo and add your height. (You can’t use an existing photo from your camera roll.) More than 270,000 pieces are eligible for the new feature across various brands on Walmart’s website.

Virtual AR try-on technology is a hot commodity in retail these days. Amazon, Hugo Boss, and GOAT are just a few companies that let you try on apparel or sneakers with your digital form. Even Snapchat is making it easier to flex with luxury brands you might not ever plan on purchasing from. There are a few kinks to work out in terms of privacy, but it doesn’t look like stepping into a physical store for retail therapy will be much of a necessity anymore.

iPhone users can download the updated Walmart app now in the App Store, but Android users will have to wait a little longer to participate.

On July 25, a handful of people milled about New York’s Times Square, constantly checking their phones and glancing up at the huge digital billboard on the Nasdaq building on the corner of 7th Ave. and West 43rd St.

They weren’t the usual tourists, but representatives of Chipotle’s social media team.

On the billboard, a Chipotle ad exhorted people to “Buy the Dip. Eat the Dip” — a campaign advertising a contest to win free cryptocurrency that could, in turn, be used to buy food at the restaurant chain’s outlets. “We knew that day we wanted to showcase the billboard,” says Neiv Toledano, social media manager at Chipotle. “We had the team out at Times Square, getting ready to take the photo and snap that moment.”

But the team had to wait, because the snap was for BeReal, the French social media app that encourages people worldwide to take a photo during the same two-minute window. Sure enough, when the notification came through, the Chipotle crew took the picture of the billboard, and posted it to followers on the app, which has been downloaded 41 million times this year alone. (BeReal’s early success hasn’t gone unnoticed: Today, TikTok announced its clone of BeReal’s features, called TikTok Now.)

The Times Square billboard reveal was a major moment for the brand, which is far from the only company to hop on to the buzzy app. Sour Patch Kids have played with the concept of one of its sugar-coated gummies taking the photos. (BeReal shows both front-facing and rear-facing images.) Pac-Sun chose to present real people having fun as part of its branding on the app. And e.l.f. Beauty’s BeReal offers supposedly unfiltered insights into what happens at the company’s headquarters.

In April, Chipotle noticed that BeReal was becoming popular, and decided to monitor how users posted before leaping in the following month. “The way we think about social media is through this lens of culture hunting. We’re constantly looking to see where consumers are and thinking about how we can engage our community,” says Chipotle’s vice president of digital marketing and off-premise, Tressie Lieberman.

“We think about each individual platform and the creative capabilities it has, and will customize our content based off that platform,” Lieberman continues. “Obviously, BeReal is very unique: It was about showing that true view into the brand.”

Whether being on BeReal is a wise move for most brands is up for debate. “The big thing I keep going back to is it’s hard to tell if BeReal is here to stay, like TikTok was a few years ago, or if it’s just going to be a fad app that disappears in the next couple of months and doesn’t pick up momentum,” says Nathan Allebach, creative director at Allebach Communications and formerly the voice behind Steak-umm’s distinctive social media presence. “Right now, brands and celebrities are in the feeling-out process of determining if this has staying power.”

That involves tiptoeing slowly into the space. Allebach points to one of Chipotle’s advertising concepts on BeReal, in which the company featured a still image with a promotional code advertising the product. “You could tell it was already set up,” he says. “But for anything more elaborate, anything that requires more involvement or mascots or anything complex, the whole thing is really not feasible.”

Toledano admits that Chipotle’s initial launch on BeReal had plenty of planning involved. “The week [in late May] we dropped the codes, we were ready,” she says. Chipotle had food cooked and redemption codes written on napkins. “We really dedicated that entire week to doing the Chipotle drops on the platform,” says Toledano.

Allebach has previously pointed out the labor conditions for social media managers are not the most conducive to a good lifestyle. “Social media managers are already expected to be on-call all throughout the week, and sometimes even the weekends,” he says. “For this content to work, you really have to be planning every day or couple of days a certain look or setting you’re ready to go with — presumably for small returns.”

You’re also expecting social media managers in charge of a brand’s BeReal account to be on-call constantly, ready to drop everything whether they’re in the middle of a meal or a bathroom break, in order to post to the app. (BeReal can ping a notification at any time during people’s waking hours, as determined by time zone.)

“But the reality of the app is there is some forgiveness with the notification,” Toledano says. (BeReal allows users to post outside the 120-second window, albeit with a tag that indicates that they were late.) She adds that Chipotle’s social media team tries to use BeReal in the same way any other user would.

But the same things that make BeReal so interesting for everyday users — the lack of control, the immediacy, the rawness — are aspects that social media marketing, with its layers of bureaucracy, tends to abhor.

“Logistically, BeReal seems like a nightmare to deal with, especially for smaller brands.”

“The whole point of the app is to have fun and be transparent,” says Lieberman. “It doesn’t have to be a perfect photo.” That said, she does admit the images posted on BeReal are checked over by a colleague before posting. “That’s something we’re comfortable with because we have built the process,” says Lieberman. “We’re pretty seamless when it comes to creating the content, then getting it out there.”

While conglomerates may feel comfortable experimenting to see if they can turn a BeReal presence into real bucks, Allebach is less sure that it’s the future for the little guys. “Logistically, BeReal seems like a nightmare to deal with,” he says, “especially for smaller brands.”

For now though, there is the halo effect of being among the first brands on a relatively new platform. And, as Allebach points out, it’s working. After all, Input is writing about Chipotle, providing it with “earned media,” i.e., unpaid coverage.

“Brands are trying to get caught up in that initial groundswell,” Allebach says. “But if we talk four to five months from now, I’m not so sure it’ll still be hot as it is right now.”

It was only a matter of time before Amazon turned Alexa into a glorified ad. Amazon revealed its new feature called Customers ask Alexa during its annual Accelerate seller conference.

This feature lets brands include their answers for any questions customers might ask an Alexa device. When a customer asks a question like, “How can I remove pet hair from my carpet?” Customers ask Alexa will let brands that have products in a relevant category respond to the customer’s question. Alexa will then (naturally) link the customer to the brand’s Amazon storefront.

Much like the promoted or sponsored results when you’re looking for a nearby restaurant, these brands’ responses function much like ads. The danger lies in how transparent Amazon will be with brand responses. For some people, they may have no idea that the product they’re being informed of is just the result of a brand willing to play ball with Amazon.

Age of ads — Brands will have to register with Amazon’s Brand Registry, where they’ll see the Customers ask Alexa feature in Seller Central. The dashboard will show brands the most frequent asked customer questions so that they can set up answers for Alexa to respond with. Alexa then selects the most relevant answer to share with the customer.

“Amazon recognizes brands as experts on their products. With this new capability, we have made it easier for brands to connect with customers to help answer common questions and better inform their purchase decisions,” Rajiv Mehta, general manager of Alexa Shopping at Amazon, said in its blog post.

In other words, Amazon will use customer data to prop up brands, and itself obviously, instead of using it to deliver the ideal answers/products to consumers.

So long, customer choice — While it will be easier for brands to get more customers, this move could come at the expense of customer choice. Brands are only concerned with selling their product, but customers are likely looking for the best product or information. The two aren’t aren’t always the same, unfortunately.

The Customers ask Alexa feature will be available for a select group of brands starting in October. It’ll be an invite-only program at first, but the feature will be available to all eligible brands in the U.S. in 2023. Afterwards, Customers ask Alexa will be available to shoppers through the Amazon search bar in late 2022 and through Echo devices in mid-2023.

Patagonia founder and reluctant billionaire Yvon Chouinard is relinquishing his company for the greater good. There’s no scandal, no hidden agenda, and certainly no loss of profit. The company announced new leadership will be held by a trust and a group of nonprofit organizations, and all profits will be donated toward climate change initiatives.

Chouinard, who turns 84 this year, said giving away the company was the best way to ensure its values would remain intact and money would be invested in the cause. Patagonia’s stock will be owned by the climate-focused Patagonia Purpose Trust and nonprofit Holdfast Collective. “Every dollar that is not reinvested back into Patagonia will be distributed as dividends to protect the planet,” the company said in a statement.

The Holdfast Collective will hold 98 percent of the company, which accounts for the non-voting stock. The other 2 percent (the voting stock) will be used by the Trust to create a “permanent legal structure to enshrine Patagonia’s purpose and values” overseen by family members and close advisors. If business continues as usual, an estimated $100 million per year will be donated to fight climate change.

Saying bye to the billions — Although Patagonia has become globally synonymous with sustainable outdoor apparel, Chouinard realized his company was contributing to waste, not fighting it. One option was to go public, but “what a disaster that would have been,” he said in a statement.

The other option was to sell the company and donate the money, but there was no way to guarantee the new owner would hold onto Patagonia’s values and employee respect. Not even Chouinard’s children wanted to inherit the company because “they embody this notion that every billionaire is a policy failure,” Chouinard told The New York Times.

Patagonia’s revenue amounts to about $1 billion annually, and the company’s worth stands at about $3 billion. Because the funds were given to a trust, the family will have to pay about $17 million in taxes for the gift and will receive no tax benefit for the Holdfast Collective donation. Chouinard’s net worth rings in at about $1.2 billion, much to his dismay. He never wanted to be a businessman and was “pissed off” about being called a billionaire in Forbes.

What comes next — From living in his car and eating cat food in the ‘60s to becoming a billionaire, Chouinard’s core values haven’t changed. And he believes Patagonia’s shouldn’t either once he’s gone. "Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth, we are using the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source,” reads the company’s statement. “We're making Earth our only shareholder. I am dead serious about saving this planet."

Patagonia will continue to give 1 percent of its earnings to grassroots environmentalist organizations. The Holdfast Collective will also have the liberty to lobby and donate to advocacy groups, carrying on the company’s legacy.

The long-awaited Ethereum “Merge” is finally complete, and it brings with it significant innovation for the world’s second-largest blockchain. Most notably, the Merge moves Ethereum away from the proof-of-work system it’s used since its inception; instead, the Ethereum blockchain will now use a proof-of-stake system for the creation of new cryptocurrency.

The process of switching Ethereum to a proof-of-stake system is a technically complex one — hence the very long wait for its completion. Those complexities open up a world of new possibilities for the Ethereum blockchain, most notably in that the new system uses much less power to create new Ethereum.

The outsized environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining is one of the biggest hurdles to mass adoption. The new Ethereum needs somewhere around 99.95 percent less energy to function, a figure that will make it significantly less unattractive in general. That gives Ethereum a mighty leg up over Bitcoin, which still uses a proof-of-work system for its mining processes.

Proof of what now? — The Merge, which was completed in the very early hours of September 15, successfully transitioned the Ethereum blockchain from its long-standing proof-of-work system to a proof-of-stake system. (The capital-M “Merge” refers to the merging of the original Ethereum chain (the Mainnet) with a separate proof-of-stake chain (the Beacon Chain); this methodology allowed the Mainnet to continue functioning as normal while the Beacon Chain was developed.)

Here’s all you really need to know about those chains:

• A proof-of-work system involves solving math problems so complex that heavy computational power is needed to complete them; the reward for solving those problems is new Bitcoin. This is known as “mining.”
• A proof-of-stake system allows anyone to “stake” crypto (at least 32 ETH) into a secure pool; the more a validator stakes, the more likely it is they’ll be rewarded with a new block for the Ethereum blockchain (thereby creating more currency).

About those gas fees... Proof-of-stake completely rids Ethereum of the need for heavy machinery — thereby eliminating nearly its entire environmental impact. Losing the computers means it’s now much easier for anyone to get involved with Ethereum. All you need to make more ETH is an existing wallet full of ETH. Granted, that 32 ETH minimum currently translates to about $47,600, so validators do really need to be invested in the system to create more ETH.

One big thing that’s not changing yet: high transaction fees. These fees, known as “gas,” are required to complete any transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, can make tasks like buying and selling NFTs much more expensive than newcomers might expect.

The good news is that the Merge opens up room for additional infrastructure changes that could eventually make gas much less expensive. For now, though, even the new Ethereum blockchain is expensive to use. Buyers can, at the very least, rest easier knowing their transactions aren’t killing the planet quite so quickly anymore.

On’s latest creation gives a more literal meaning to carbon footprint. The footwear brand is introducing the Cloudprime, a sneaker with EVA foam made from carbon emissions. The new material is called CleanCloud and comes from a four-way partnership with LanzaTech, Borealis, and Technip.

Over five years in the making, CleanCloud uses carbon emissions as a raw material to form the Cloudprime’s midsole and eliminates the need for petroleum. On hopes to use CleanCloud more in the future as it moves toward making all of its offerings fossil free and fully circular.

“Holding the first-ever shoe made of carbon emissions in my hands is a huge milestone — not only for On, but for the whole sports industry,” Caspar Coppetti, co-founder and executive co-chairman of On, said in a press release. “We believe that On can be an agent for positive change through enabling and accelerating the scale up of sustainable technologies such as CleanCloud.”

How it works — To make CleanCloud, On uses technology from LanzaTech to capture carbon monoxide from industrial sources before the gas is emitted into the atmosphere. Once captured, the emissions enter a patented fermentation process that allow its naturally occurring bacteria to convert to ethanol, a substance then dehydrated by Technip Energies to create ethylene. From there, Borealis polymerizes the ethylene to create EVA in the form of small plastic pellets.

A look into the process.

On hopes CleanCloud frames recycled carbon as a resource rather than a liability and plans to bring the technology to as many consumers as possible. “Five years ago, [CleanCloud] was barely a dream,” added Coppetti in a statement. “Imagine what can happen in the future as we unlock the potential of alternative carbon sources with further research and in collaboration with the best partners.”

As CleanCloud only makes up the midsole of the Cloudprime sneaker, On has tapped additional partners to make the silhouette even more sustainable. A polyester-based textile made from carbon emissions, created in collaboration with young French start-up Fairbrics, dresses the upper of the Cloudprime. Underfoot, On partnered with chemical start-up Novoloop to make an outsole made from 32 percent post-consumer plastic waste.

Hang tight — A release for the Cloudprime sneaker has yet to be announced, but an On spokesperson tells Input that the company is working to incorporate its CleanCloud technology into footwear and apparel within the next 3 to 5 years. “[CleanCloud] is a meaningful step forward, while also signaling there is still significant work to be done,” the spokesperson writes in an email to Input. “To scale this technology across the industry, it will require enthusiasm and investment from not only fellow brands... but consumers as well.” So when the Cloudprime sneaker does debut, you know what to do.

A coalition of 13 privacy-focused tech companies, including the likes of Mozilla, DuckDuckGo, and Brave, this week sent a letter voicing their support for the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA). The letter (which you can read in full here) focuses on Big Tech’s invasive data-collection business.

“Incessant data collection and tech monopolies are inherently linked: the more data they collect and use to influence user decision making, the stronger their grip on the industry becomes, leaving users feeling like they have no option but to accept a lack of privacy to use the Internet,” the coalition writes in the introduction of its letter.

None of the signees are big, exactly — they don’t make enough money to be affected themselves by the AICOA — but many are well-respected in the tech industry. And the fact that they’re not part of the Big Tech crew is the point, really. These are companies that get the short stick when Big Tech monopolizes anything and everything in sight.

A quick AICOA primer — The American Innovation and Choice Online Act is one of a handful of Big Tech antitrust bills that have been floating around the federal legal system this year. The AICOA was first introduced in the House of Representatives in June 2021; companion legislation was introduced in the Senate last October. The Senate was expected to vote on the bill’s passing before its August recess, but, uh, that never happened. TBD on when that vote will actually happen.

The AIOCA is unique in that it focuses on “self-preferencing” in Big Tech. This would make it illegal for Amazon to promote its Amazon Basics line in search results, for example. Companies would need to have a market cap of at least $550 billion to be affected by the bill, so small or mid-sized tech companies need not worry.

The bill would also block Big Tech companies from using non-public data (read: data collected from users) to the advantage of their own products. Google’s search engine empire would need to be much more careful in the data it used to influence business decisions, for example.

Nudging the needle — Big Tech stands to lose a whole lot with the passing of the AICOA. There’s nothing quite like building a business on principles of self-preferencing and then being told that self-preferencing is illegal. As you might expect, companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft are lobbying hard against the bill’s passing.

The path to passing the AICOA is made a bit smoother by influential endorsements like this privacy-focused coalition’s letter. Earlier this year, the Department of Justice overtly voiced its own support for the bill. Next up: the ever-contentious Senate vote.

A lot of people have saved Christmas over the years: some furry green jerk played by Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger (and to a lesser extent Sinbad), Tim Allen (both pre- and post-cocaine), a bunch of creepy clay figures from the ‘60s, a religious zealot named Kirk Cameron apparently, and now, with the help of none other than Melania Trump, NFTs will carry out this truly American rite of passage.

As reported by (you guessed it) Fox News, the former First Lady has threatened us with her own line of Christmas paraphernalia, which includes physical ornaments but also NFTs. These, according to Melaniatrump.com are meant to embody “hope” and “inspire [your] loved ones with positive purpose, aspirations, and values as we enter the new year.” Because nothing says familial togetherness like failing to explain “non-fungible” to your meemaw before she embarks on her well-deserved nog nap.

If you’re into this sort of thing, the NFTs will be minted on the Solana Blockchain and are redeemable with the purchase of a physical ornament. Naturally, NFTs can be bought and displayed as symbols of your Melania fandom, or re-sold to the highest bidder. Most NFTs are available through a platform called USA Memorabilia which hosts other fun digital art like this “POTUS Trump collection.”

The physical ornaments, on the other hand, can only be displayed on your physical tree to foster divisive, family-ruining discourse. Merry Christmas!

More like mistle-no — So, what does a Melania Trump-imagined collectible ornament NFT look like, you’re (unfortunately) wondering? Well, buckle in kiddos, because you’re in for a web3 miracle.

Like my purely theoretical children, I love all of the Trump ornies equally, but have a special fondness for “Merry Christmas.” Don’t tell “Be Best,” please, they’re not emotionally developed enough yet to handle the Truth.

There’s something about the unimaginative flatness of it all that gives me all the warm fuzzies of an e-greeting from an estranged uncle, or an e-mail chain about a fundraiser for a church my parents made me go to as a kid.

The gold star was apparently designed by Melania herself! A fun fact to share to your holiday guests immediately before they inquire about the rum used in this year’s punch, its ABV, and where exactly the entire bottle can be found ASAP. Ornaments (both physical and digital) will apparently be “signed” by Melania herself and should couple nicely with your signed cardboard cutout of Nancy Reagan.

Charity, kind of... sort of — It may seem strange buying ornaments (NFT or otherwise) from someone who apparently hates Christmas, but at least part of the proceeds will apparently go to scholarships for children in foster families. Exactly what part of the proceeds is unclear, and Input has reached out through Melaniatrump.com for an exact figure. In any event, some money will be spread for good will — but not before Melania has her taste.

While this isn’t the first time Melania Trump has attempted to hawk NFTs, it may very well be the laziest, and at the very least, the most ill-timed. The volume of NFT trading on OpenSea has cratered, and even blue chip collectibles like the Bored Ape Yacht Club aren’t immune to the downturn.

That’s obviously bad for Melania Trump, but great for those in your life who have not Been their best Best yet. Stocking stuffers, anyone?

Want a surefire way to make AI image generators like DALL-E create captivating images? Prompt the system to mimic an artist.

It’s something the internet latched onto quickly, realizing the technique gives the best possible returns. By doing so, it’s possible to time travel to see how, say, Donald Trump would be portrayed by Picasso or Van Gogh or even a prehistoric cave painter.

Such “X in the style of Y” prompts work so well in large part because the reams of data used to train AI like DALL-E, Midjourney, and WOMBO are pulled from the internet, which is often populated by copyrighted imagery. The legality of using that training data is contested in the European Union; in the U.S., it’s widely believed that a lot of it is permissible under fair-use doctrine.

What’s legal and what’s moral are different questions — which is where artists Mat Dryhurst, an academic, and Holly Herndon, a renowned musician, come in. The married couple, based in Berlin, are AI veterans: Around 2016, they began training neural networks, later building such networks themselves. One project, Holly+, launched last year, allows anyone to upload a polyphonic track that can then be “sung” by a deepfaked version of Herndon’s voice, which is created using AI generative tools.

The pair are very considerate about what training data they use. “We ended up making the decision we would train our machine-learning systems on data that only came from us, or people who consented,” says Dryhurst.

In keeping with this mindset, Dryhurst and Herndon are developing a standard they’re calling Source+, which is designed as a way of allowing artists to and opt into — or out of — allowing their work being used as training data for AI. (The standard will cover not just visual artists, but musicians and writers, too.) They hope that AI generator developers will recognize and respect the wishes of artists whose work could be used to train such generative tools.

Source+ (now in beta) is a product of the organization Spawning — a partnership between the couple and Jordan Meyer and Patrick Hoepner, founders of the WolfBear software studio. Spawning, which officially launches today, also developed Have I Been Trained, a site that lets artists see if their work is among the 5.8 billion images in the Laion-5b dataset, which is used to train the Stable Diffusion and Midjourney AI generators. The team plans to add more training datasets to pore through in the future.

The entire project is designed to empower artists, at no cost to them. “The benefit of working with us is that we can serve or retract your data to all services on request, as opposed to chasing individual organizations down,” says Dryhurst.

Dryhurst says Spawning has been in touch with the developers of some of the most popular AI tools and received sympathetic responses. “I’m very optimistic that if we can establish a verified database of opt-in, opt-out wishes from artists that we can honor those wishes,” he says. “That’s the basic foundation on which a lot of good can come from these tools.”

Project goals

Dryhurst and Herndon have picked now to launch their project — and to start the discussion about ownership of data that trains AI — because of the huge public reaction to generative tools in recent months. “Incredible image-spawning systems like DALL-E have been helpful to bring this conversation mainstream, so now is a great time to intervene,” says Herndon via email.

Herndon adds, “It is also important to present a different narrative of how spawning is different to 20th century practices like sampling, in order to not derail a productive discussion about how we can deal with this new terrain fairly and with excitement.”

Spawning and sampling, the artists argue, are two different things entirely. “Spawning is a more reproductive process,” says Dryhurst. Rather than taking an element and remixing it to create new art, spawning is creating new artworks from a training data corpus.

The project isn’t aimed at stopping people putting, say, “A McDonalds restaurant in the style of Rembrandt” into DALL-E and gazing on the wonder produced. “Rembrandt is dead,” Dryhurst says, “and Rembrandt, you could argue, is so canonized that his work has surpassed the threshold of extreme consequence in generating in their image.” He’s more concerned about AI image generators impinging on the rights of living, mid-career artists who have developed a distinctive style of their own.

What Dryhurst doesn’t want to do is create a third-party rights police force. “We’re not looking to build tools for DMCA takedowns and copyright hell,” he says. “That’s not what we’re going for, and I don’t even think that would work.”

He also believes — contrary to what AI companies may fear — that artists will be more willing to accede to their work being used than you may think. “I believe more will ultimately opt in than out, but first we have to establish a common respect,” says Dryhurst. “A lot of good will come from getting everyone on that same page.”

Discord is great for having casual, fast-paced, niche conversations throughout the day with friends and strangers who share your interests. It’s not so great for anything focused, permanent, or that you need to find easily, which poses a problem for anyone who uses Discord for anything else. Forum Channels, a new feature Discord is introducing today, seems like a possible solution.

Forum Channels make Discord a bit more like Reddit, and it should hopefully help the messaging platform be a better tool for all of the new ways it's used outside of gaming-centered messaging.

Dedicated threads — Discord already offers threads for conversations that branch out of the main subject of a channel, but it archives them automatically after 24 hours as a way to remove clutter. Forum Channels lets them stick around. Now, as a server moderator, you can create a new Forum Channel that allows for an unlimited amount of threads to exist inside of it — a place for focused conversations on a specific subject matter that can be easily referred back to later.

“When you explore a Forum Channel, you’ll see a list of posts that start new conversations, complete with big bolded titles and relevant tags,” Discord explains. “You can hop into one of them and join in, use the search bar to find more posts in the archives, or even create your own — complete with a helpful, descriptive image that will display for anyone scrolling by.”

A bad fit — Forum Channels should be useful to anyone who doesn’t keep with servers they're a part of regularly, but it’s pretty clear Discord’s designing the feature for any business who switched over to Discord in place of a dedicated forum or support wiki because their audience was already there.

As Discord’s popularity has grown, so has the number of groups who use it in professional settings rather than just as a place to organize casual communities. It’s pretty common to be directed to a dedicated Discord server if you have a question about your new favorite game rather than a dedicated solution. The problem is, Discord was never really designed for those use cases, and valuable information can get lost in the oncoming rush of new messages, regardless of the channel. Forum Channels should keep the useful stuff protected, and a bit easier to find.

Forum Channels start rolling out to servers with community features enabled today and are visible on mobile and desktop versions of the app.

Sony and WS Audiology are looking to tackle this longstanding stigma of wearing hearing aids by teaming up to make over-the-counter, self-fitting versions.

The partnership combines Sony’s decades of consumer and audio product experience with WS Audiology’s hearing aid tech and expertise. The two companies are looking to make “top-of-the-line” hearing aids that people can get their hands on more easily.

The first product will be under the Sony brand and will first come to the U.S. market, since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently ruled that hearing aids could be sold as an over-the-counter product without prescription. This ruling goes into effect in October 2022.

Improving accessibility — There aren’t many details on the actual product yet, but we’re already expecting major implications on the hearing aids market. This could amount to a game-changing product that makes hearing aids more accessible, in terms of affordability and availability.

On top of what the product could do, Sony and WS Audiology are hoping that their upcoming hearing aids could address the stigma behind using hearing aids. In the announcement video, Osamu Hajimoto, deputy president of Sony’s New Business & Technology Development Group, said the company wants to design a hearing aid product that people can pick up and use as naturally as contact lenses.

Future of hearing aids — Combining Sony’s design and brand name with WS Audiology’s know-how, we’re expecting a competent hearing aid that also has an attractive design like Sony’s LinkBuds S. It’s likely that we’ll get hearing aids that can blend in just like wireless earbuds, which everyone has in their ears nowadays anyways.

Even though the first product is limited to a U.S. launch, it’s a no-brainer for the partnership to expand the reach if it does well. With the FDA ruling, Sony likely won’t be the only one offering OTC hearing aids, but we sure have high hopes for this one.

Popular fertility app Flo is rolling out a new “Anonymous Mode,” a privacy feature the company first promised mere hours after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The addition is particularly notable given that Flo is currently facing a class-action lawsuit for sharing users’ health information without consent.

“Flo will never share or sell user data, and only collects data when we have a legal basis to do so and when our users have given their informed consent,” said Susanne Schumacher, Data Protection Officer at Flo, in a press release about Anonymous Mode. “Any data we do collect is fully encrypted, and this will never change.”

Going incognito — Turning on Anonymous Mode removes all identifying information from your Flo account, including your email and name. It’s like using the app without an account, which means users taking advantage of the feature won’t be able to move their data to a new phone.

But these pieces of personal information aren’t the only ways in which a user could be tracked; technical identifiers like your phone’s physical address and IP address are often linked even to data that has been “anonymized.” Flo worked with Cloudflare to ensure these technical identifiers are unidentifiable, too, by using Cloudflare’s App Relay.

According to Flo’s Anonymous Mode white paper, the Flo app will create an entirely new anonymous profile once the new feature has been turned on, allowing the app to transfer over only the most necessary information. The white paper also dives deep into “Oblivious HTTP,” a protocol developed by Cloudflare and Mozilla, which uses a relay service to separate user data from IP address data.

A new standard? — Flo says it hopes its work on Anonymous Mode will inspire other health-tech companies to implement similar features of their own. We’d have to agree: most tech companies profess their love for user privacy, but few actually put in the work to make that privacy a reality.

Private companies do have a responsibility to protect their users, but the government has been no help at all in this effort, either. The U.S. has such lax data privacy protections that senators have had to repeatedly nudge the FTC toward finding solutions.

Anonymous Mode is available for all Flo users on iOS now; an Android version of the feature is set to launch next month.

Merrell is giving its best-selling hiking shoe a makeover. Shortly after releasing its Bravada 2 sneaker, the outdoor brand is introducing the third iteration of its Moab hiking boot. The classic silhouette now boasts a more sustainable build as well as added comfort and stability.

“Without jeopardizing what consumers have come to love about our bestselling Moab shoe, we were able to utilize sustainable materials in construction such as 100 percent recycled laces, webbing, and lining, creating a more environmentally friendly Moab,” Nathan Buelow, senior brand marketing manager at Merrell, said in a press release. “On top of that, we analyzed every aspect to deliver a more supportive insole, a softer, more cushioned midsole, and the best-in-class Vibram outsole that provides our highest level of stability yet along with trusted traction.”

Elevate your hike — The advanced Vibram TC5+ outsole has been tested for ultimate performance outdoors whether wearers are hiking, mountain biking, or trekking through the snow and other wet conditions. The sole’s non-marking build offers more grip, traction, durability, and flexibility than previous Moab shoes and is paired with upgraded lugs and toe contours for extra stability.

At the heel, the Moab 3 boasts Merrell’s Air Cushion and Super Rebound Compound, which provide durable shock absorption to help reduce torque and add even more stability. The features also allow for a smooth transition into the midfoot, ensuring each step feels secure and balanced. Increased ankle support finishes off the hiking shoe’s upgraded tooling.

Win big — To celebrate the launch of the Moab 3, Merrell has released an interactive digital game named Hike and Seek. Within the game, users can earn rewards by completing hiking-related challenges in the world around them, with special location-based challenges offered in New York City and Denver.

Hike and Seek’s challenges are all free to participate in and range from social, outdoor, and retail adventures. Those who take part in the experiences have the chance to win Merrell merch, and those who complete 10 or more challenges will be entered to win an all-expenses-paid trip for themselves and a guest to Moab, Utah in 2023. Hike and Seek, accessible through Merrell’s Moab website, will be available until October 18.

“In developing Hike and Seek, our ultimate goal was to provide another way to get consumers outside for fresh air to benefit both their physical and mental health,” added Buelow in a statement. “A hike doesn’t need to be on the Appalachian Trail or to the top of a mountain, sometimes it means tying your shoes and exploring the world around you — which could be as far away as a national park or the local trail around the corner from wherever you call home.”

Regardless of the destination, each hike can be elevated with Merrell’s Moab 3 hiking shoes, now available on the brand’s website. The best-selling pair is fit for both beginner and expert hikers, and with its latest updates, will surely motivate anyone toward that trip to Moab.

GoPro managed to fit a larger sensor into a smaller package with its latest mini action camera. Its latest three editions of the Hero lineup include the Hero11 Black, the Hero11 Black Creator Edition, and the Hero11 Black Mini.

The base model Hero11 Black is only a slight upgrade from its predecessor, but we’re expecting the Hero11 Black Mini to steal the show with its more portable form factor. GoPro removed the screens and made the action cam narrower, making for a more portable GoPro that’s less in your way and easier to set up for whatever adventure you’re on.

We haven’t seen such a small form factor from GoPro since the GoPro Hero4 Session, which is pretty obsolete at this point with its 1440p resolution and eight-megapixel photos. GoPro is finally revisiting this smaller size by removing all the unnecessary bits, but amping up the specs.

Vertical vision — GoPro upgraded the Hero11 lineup with a new 1/1.9-inch sensor that makes for 5.3k resolution at 60 fps video and 24.7-megapixel photos. The larger sensor allows for a taller 8:7 aspect ratio that makes it easier to crop photos and video for social media posts.

The Hero11 will also have updated software with GoPro’s HyperSmooth 5.0 feature that offer improved video stabilization and an Auto Boost feature that automatically determines how much video stabilization should be used based on your speed and movement.

Beyond that, there’s not too many significant upgrades for the Hero11 Black. The latest action cam will have an improved battery performance in colder conditions and a new feature that automatically edits your videos into a highlight reel and sends it to your phone via the GoPro Quik app — but you have to be a GoPro subscriber for this.

Other than that, it’s a fairly modest upgrade. That’s why we’re more interested in the Hero11 Black Mini. GoPro put dual-mounting fingers on the back and the bottom of the Mini, making it that much easier to mount and get the precise angle you want. With just one button and no screens, the Mini could be better for those who want a set-it-and-forget-it style of action cam. Sometimes, one button is really all you need anyways.

Mini, but mighty — The Hero11 Black is already available for $500, while the Creator Edition is going for $700. The Hero11 Black Mini will be more affordable at $400, but is coming out October 25. The Hero11 Black is a slight bump up from the Hero10 pricing with an MSRP of $450, but you’ll get a roughly $100 discount for any of the Hero11 Blacks if you’re a GoPro subscriber.

It’s definitely nice having a screen to frame up an image or video before hitting the record button. However, some people just want something simple to record their outdoor escapades POV-style and aren’t necessarily concerned with framing. For those in the market for an action that’s simple and stays out of the way, the Mini is just the right size.

Last year, Nike launched its Greater Than (G.T.) Series with three silhouettes built for cutting, jumping, and running. The first and fan-favorite in the trio, the G.T. Cut, is now getting an upgrade in time for the upcoming NBA season.

The G.T. Cut 2 is intended for players at any level who need to create and close space at a moment’s notice to keep the opposition off balance. Most of the sneaker’s power is at its core with a wiper-blade pattern with deep tread grooves for advanced traction. With each forceful step, the grooves separate and snap back into place to help grip the court and cut quickly. The upper half of the outsole also sports a second area of nubbed traction.

The heel’s shape gets a springy upgrade for a locked fit, combined with a Zoom Air unit per the request of athletes. Because basketball shoes tend to be heavy, Nike carved out the midsole to reduce the rubber content and overall weight of the shoe. Elements of the first G.T. Cut are present, such as the full-length Zoom Air strobel and a React foam sockliner.

Cut to the chase — Two color schemes are set for the G.T. Cut 2. The first, in honor of Sabrina Ionescu, sports a pale lavender and blue base with black accenting. The “Bred” variant, backed by Devin Booker, is dressed in black and red with gray accenting. Both feature a revamped tongue logo and a specially branded sole unit. As was the case with its predecessor, the sneaker even looks good enough to wear off-court.

A product of the Nike Sport Research Lab, the sneaker is backed by intense research and digital tools that provide insight into where it can be improved for hardwood performance. Ross Klein, Sr. Creative Director of Nike Performance Footwear, said in a press release that the G.T. Cut 2’s traction pattern came from micro-level insight from the NSRL. Because of its avid testing process and sports researchers, Klein says each product is meant to “push the boundaries of human potential.”

If you’re a Nike member, you’ll have early access to the Bred color variant on September 16, which retails for $170. Otherwise, you can pick up the shoe in select retailers on September 20. The Sabrina Ionescu style will follow on October 13 via Nike’s website and app.

At the end of last week, the SEC announced that it would be establishing two new office within its Division of Corporation Finance’s Disclosure Review Program (DRP): an Office of Crypto Assets and an Office of Industrial Applications and Services.

According to a statement from the SEC, part of the DRP’s responsibilities include reviewing company filings, and as presently constructed, the division has seven existing offices that are industry specific. The addition of a branch dedicated to crypto asset filings suggests federal institutions are beginning to monitor an industry that has witnessed a $1 billion loss in scams alone.

President Biden, put an executive order into motion this past March in order to gather some preliminary research to aid in future regulation efforts, and the U.S. Department of Justice made waves after (justifiably) charging a pair of 20-year-olds for running off with $1.1 million in an NFT rug pull.

Still, it is evident that more preventive measures are needed in order to excise foul play from within the crypto industry itself.

Classification — One of the future battlegrounds with respect to widespread crypto regulation will certainly center on how digital assets are defined. The crypto community would be impacted heavily if various tokens (like Bitcoin and Ethereum) or other blockchain adjacent products like NFTs were to be re-classified as securities.

As outlined by Forbes, the SEC is weighing the idea of this kind of re-classification, and it would effectively slow down crypto markets considering there would be an increased level of scrutiny across the board of daily transactions.

Side-effects — On one hand, this would go a long way towards reducing scams and faulty blockchain-based projects (requiring people to register their proposed digital assets with the SEC itself), but on the other hand, there could be a reduction in competition across the industry at large, and only the biggest platforms could emerge from the wake of such an overhaul.

Either way, it’s evident that while the SEC is becoming more wary of the crypto industry, the addition of an Office of Crypto Assets dedicated to crypto company filings means that the space is also more legitimate than ever.

What does the "Pro" in the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max really represent? Finally, something meaningful, actually.

In the past, an iPhone Pro has meant a few things: a more premium stainless steel frame, an extra telephoto lens in the rear camera, "pro" shooting modes like ProRAW and ProRES, a display with ProMotion refresh rate, and larger storage options.

The differences between a “pro” iPhone and a regular one were minor enough that most people didn't need to get Apple's top-of-the-line smartphone. This year, though, Apple has really put the "pro" in the iPhone 14 Pros. Even if the regular iPhone 14 / 14 Plus suffice, the iPhone 14 Pros are really tempting.

The new 48-megapixel main lens in the triple-lens camera is more pro than the 12-megapixel shooter in the iPhone 14s; there's also an "Action mode" that captures seemingly impossibly shake-free videos. The display is more pro, too, with a very clever "Dynamic Island" that replaces the notch and an always-on display mode that pairs wonderfully with iOS 16's new customizable lock screen. And for the first time, the pro iPhones have a more powerful chip (A16 Bionic) than the non-pro models (A15 Bionic).

With no price hikes (in the U.S. at least) — the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max start at the same $999 and $1,099 as the iPhone 13 Pros did — Apple's premium iPhones are a dang good deal, and even more so if you trade in an old iPhone to get a discount.

Input may receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article. We only include products that have been independently selected by Input's editorial team.

iPhone 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max

Apple -

Design

Since the beginning of the "iPhone brick era" (as I like to call it), the iPhone Pro has steadily increased in thickness and weight. Don't get me wrong, the iPhone 14 Pros are sleek slabs, but they're still bricks. As much as I love that Apple is prioritizing function over form, I think it's time the iPhone goes on a diet. I’m not saying Apple should make the iPhone 15 as bendable as the iPhone 6, but slimming down the profile would make my hand hurt less.

iPhone Pro:

• iPhone 12 Pro: 7.4mm / 189 grams
• iPhone 13 Pro: 7.65mm / 204 grams
• iPhone 14 Pro: 7.85mm / 206 grams

iPhone Pro Max:

• iPhone 12 Pro Max: 7.4mm / 228 grams
• iPhone 13 Pro Max: 7.65mm / 240 grams
• iPhone 14 Pro Max: 7.85mm / 240 grams

Coming from the iPhone 12 Pro, I definitely feel the iPhone 14 Pro's extra heft day to day; the huge triple-lens camera makes it more top-heavy. The iPhone 14 Pro Max is the same weight as the iPhone 13 Pro Max, but still a good deal heavier than the iPhone 12 Pro Max. All of this is to say the iPhone 14 Pro / Pro Max are not the lightweight iPhones of Apple's past, especially with a case on.

My iPhone 14 Pro review unit is Space Black. I love it. The glass back and the stainless steel frame are noticeably darker than the gray Graphite iPhone 13 Pro; like a mix between the black and Jet Black iPhone 7. My iPhone 14 Pro Max review unit is Deep Purple; it's a dark purple that sometimes looks gray or black. Both look sleek in person; both are still fingerprint magnets. You can also get them in silver and gold.

eSIM future — In the U.S., there's one feature change that has been controversial since the iPhone 14 Pros were announced: the lack of a physical nano SIM card. Apple has removed the tray, opting for eSIM instead. The change has caused quite a stir with people who frequently switch between phones (like travel junkies and people like me who review tons of phones for a living). Here's the deal: for most people, converting their physical SIM to an eSIM will be an initial hassle and then they'll forget all about it. By the time they replace their iPhone 14 Pro, more carriers and phones (iPhone or not) will have adopted eSIM.

Like it or not, eSIMs are the future. There's also an upside to eSIM: you can store eight of them in your iPhone 14 Pro and have two of them active at the same time. You'd need a little wallet or case to hold your physical SIMs, and then pray you don't lose any of them. Tech nerd me does wish Apple would give consumers the option to buy an iPhone 14 Pro with a SIM card slot. Why not make it an option for the people who want it? The models are being sold outside of the U.S. Just ship some over.

The Lightning port also lives another year. The clock is ticking for Apple to switch the iPhone to USB-C, likely next year. Apple is also sticking with the same wired charging speeds: 50 percent charge in 30 minutes with a 20W (or higher) adapter, which isn’t included. At this point, I’m all in on MagSafe wireless charging, but I know I’m not the only one who wants to see faster wired charging speeds in the iPhone.

Display

As with the iPhone 12 Pros and 13 Pros, the iPhone 14 Pros are available in two display sizes with fluid 120Hz ProMotion refresh rates: 6.1 inches for the 14 Pro and 6.7 inches for the 14 Pro Max. Both models also come with Apple's shatter-resistant "Ceramic Shield" protection. (The thoroughly scratched and dropped, but not shattered, display on my launch day iPhone 12 Pro is proof Ceramic Shield really works.) Screen size is only one part of the story, though.

iPhone Pro:

• iPhone 12 Pro: 2,532 x 1,170 (460 ppi)
• iPhone 13 Pro: 2,532 x 1,170 (460 ppi)
• iPhone 14 Pro: 2,556 x 1,179 (460 ppi)

iPhone Pro Max:

• iPhone 12 Pro Max: 2,778 x 1,284 (460 ppi)
• iPhone 13 Pro Max: 2,778 x 1,284 (460 ppi)
• iPhone 14 Pro Max: 2,796 x 1,290 (460 ppi)

Dynamic Island

The most significant display upgrade is the Dynamic Island, which replaces the notch. This pill-shaped cutout is actually hardware and software working together to shapeshift. Inside of the Dynamic Island is the TrueDepth camera hardware; software merges these two cutouts into a singular pill, expanding and shrinking with activities, alerts, and notifications. The Dynamic Island is really friggin' cool and makes the iPhone 14 Pros feel alive. Audio apps like Apple Music and Spotify use the Dynamic Island to display album art and a waveform; phone calls show duration and a waveform; connected AirPods briefly appear in it and Face ID now pops out from the black bar instead of filling the center of the screen. And sometimes the Dynamic Island can split into two, like when you have a timer and music playing.

The Dynamic Island isn't just a shapeshifting menu bar, it also serves as a way to access shortcuts or return to an app, giving iOS another layer of multitasking previously not possible. A single tap on the Dynamic Island brings you to the app running, and a long press can open up more options like playback controls.

At launch, all apps that support the NowPlaying and CallKit APIs will automatically work with the Dynamic Island, no update required. When Live Activities rolls out via an iOS 16 update later this year, the Dynamic Island will be able to display at-a-glance info for stuff like food deliveries, sports scores, ride sharing, and fitness workouts. And this could just be the start. Apple could roll out new APIs in the future that gives the Dynamic Island more functionality.

The Dynamic Island is really friggin' cool and makes the iPhone 14 Pros feel alive.

The Dynamic Island isn't without any strangeness, though. For example, when it's too wide, vital icons like the Wi-Fi are pushed off into Control Center. Other times, the tiny yellow dot indicator to show that the microphone is active is weirdly pushed to the very edge of the right corner when an app is running in the background; however, when an app is open, the dot-sized indicators sit between the IR sensor and the front-facing camera.

Apple loves to overuse "magical" whenever it describes new features or products. In the case of the Dynamic Island, it's deserved. Even after a week of testing apps that support the Dynamic Island, the morphing pill continues to delight on a daily basis.

Always-on Display

Can we get a finally? While Android phones have had always-on displays (AOD) for years, Apple is just now adding an AOD to the iPhone 14 Pros as an exclusive feature. Could Apple just update older iPhones with an AOD? In theory, yes. Apple could, but its implementation of an AOD makes use of the iPhone 14 Pro's adaptive refresh rate that drops down to 1Hz for extremely low impact on battery life. In comparison, the iPhone 13 Pros refresh rate can only go down to 10Hz, which isn't energy efficient enough for Apple's AOD.

In typical Apple fashion, late as the iPhone is to the AOD game, it is better in my opinion. Unlike on Android phones where the AOD is black and only certain features like the time and notifications illuminate, the iPhone 14 Pros' AOD dims the lock screen wallpaper, leaving the time, calendar, and lock screen widgets visible. It's similar to how the Apple Watch's always-on clock works. I like being able to see my wallpaper, albeit dimmed out. I've seen no meaningful hit to battery life with the AOD. Unfortunately, there's no way to have an AOD that does not show the wallpaper in a dim state; the only workaround is using solid black wallpaper for the lock screen. The black, uh, dims to black.

One more thing to know about the always-on display: it does turn off in a few situations such as when the screen is face down, the device is in your pocket, and when you've walked away from it for a period of time. The AOD also turns off if your iPhone has a sleep focus turned on.

Increased Brightness

I don't think I have ever wished for my iPhone 12 Pro's Super Retina XDR display to be brighter; its 800 nits of max typical brightness and 1,200 nits of peak HDR brightness are blinding. On the iPhone 14 Pros, Apple has increased the brightness more for peak HDR and outdoors, and it's very, very bright.

• iPhone 12 Pro: 800 nits max / 1,200 nits peak HDR
• iPhone 13 Pro: 1,000 nits max / 1,200 nits peak HDR
• iPhone 14 Pro: 1,000 nits max / 1,600 nits peak HDR / 2,000 nits peak (outdoor)

I can't say anyone really needs the 1,600 nits of peak brightness for HDR content, but the 2,000 nits for outdoors is game-changing. The displays in the iPhone 14 Pros are much clearer in direct sunlight compared to my iPhone 12 Pro; I have not had to run into the shade to see Very Important Tweets.

Performance

Apple did something really interesting this year. Instead of putting the newest, most powerful A-series chip in both the regular iPhone 14s and the iPhone 14 Pros, Apple only gave the pro models the new A16 Bionic chip. The iPhone 14s use the 5-core GPU variant of the A15 Bionic chip from the iPhone 13 Pros (the iPhone 13s had a 4-core GPU).

Here are some Geekbench 5 scores comparing how far the iPhone 14 Pros to the 13 Pros, 12 Pros, and Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra.

A16 Bionic vs. A15 Bionic vs. A14 Bionic — CPU test

• iPhone 12 Pro: (A14 Bionic): 1,586 / 3,937
• iPhone 13 Pro: (A15 Bionic): 1,725 / 4,722
• iPhone 14 Pro: (A16 Bionic): 1,875 / 5,495
• Galaxy S22 Ultra: (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1): 914 / 3,039

To nobody’s surprise, CPU performance is up year over year. That's good! Here's the breakdown: For single-core CPU tasks, the iPhone 14 Pro is 9 percent faster than the iPhone 13 Pro and 18 percent faster than the iPhone 12 Pro. And for multi-core CPU tasks, the iPhone 14 Pro is 16 percent faster than the iPhone 13 Pro and 39 percent faster than the iPhone 12 Pro. I tossed in the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, for comparison and the iPhone 14 Pros just annihilate it: 105 percent faster on single-core and 80 percent faster on multi-core.

A16 Bionic vs. A15 Bionic vs. A14 Bionic — GPU test

• iPhone 12 Pro (A14 Bionic): 9,499
• iPhone 13 Pro: (A15 Bionic): 14,419
• iPhone 14 Pro: (A16 Bionic): 15,344
• Galaxy S22 Ultra: (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1): 5,907

As you can see, the graphics performance on the iPhone 14 Pro is 6 percent faster than the iPhone 13 Pro and 62 percent faster than on iPhone 12 Pro. And compared to the S22 Ultra, the iPhone 14 Pros' GPU is 201 percent faster. No, that's not a typo.

I wrote in my iPhone 13 Pros review: "No Android phone comes close to the iPhone when it comes to sheer performance. iPhone dominates again." Still holds true with the iPhone 14 Pros. Not only do all of the iPhone 14 and 13 models destroy one of this year's best Android phones, the two-year-old iPhone 12s crush the S22 Ultra by a big margin.

All of this power contributes to serious speed in the iPhone 14 Pros. Most people will look at these increases in CPU and GPU performance and wonder why anyone needs it. And to that, I only have this to say: you don't realize how much computing power the simplest of tasks on iPhone require. When iOS 16 just flies, hiccup-free, that is the CPU talking to all of the various components that make up an iPhone at blistering speeds. When more and more graphically intensive 3D games just run smoothly, without any dropped frames, that is the GPU doing the heavy lifting. When things just work, that is the power of Apple’s chipset accomplishing its job in the background and not getting enough credit.

Battery life

Not much to report here. Compared to the iPhone 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max, the iPhone 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max gets one extra hour of battery life for local video playback. However, if you compare the battery life to the iPhone 12 Pro / 12 Pro Max, you can see there's a major leap. The iPhone 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max are going to last longer for people like me who purchase an iPhone every two years (or more).

iPhone Pro:

• iPhone 12 Pro: 17 hours (video) / 11 hours (video streamed) / 65 hours (audio)
• iPhone 13 Pro: 22 hours (video) / 20 hours (video streamed) / 75 hours (audio)
• iPhone 14 Pro: 23 hours (video) / 20 hours (video streamed) / 75 hours (audio)

iPhone Pro Max:

• iPhone 12 Pro Max: 20 hours (video) / 12 hours (video streamed) / 80 hours (audio)
• iPhone 13 Pro Max: 28 hours (video) / 25 hours (video streamed) / 95 hours (audio)
• iPhone 14 Pro Max: 29 hours (video) / 25 hours (video streamed) / 95 hours (audio)

Since I’m coming from an iPhone 12 Pro to the 14 Pro, I am seeing much longer battery life for mixed usage. This is a combination of two things: 1) the battery health on my iPhone 12 Pro is now at 80 percent after two years of heavy daily use and 2) the iPhone 14 Pro has a larger physical battery.

Despite adding all sorts of features like the Dynamic Island, always-on display, and a larger main camera sensor, the iPhone 14 Pros still get all-day battery life. As with past pro iPhones, the iPhone 14 Pro easily lasts a full day and the 14 Pro Max can make it 1-2 days depending on usage. I've been seeing about 6-7 hours of screen on time with the iPhone 14 Pro whereas I only got around 3-4 hours on my aging iPhone 12 Pro. Older iPhone owners are gonna be blown away by the iPhone 14 Pros' long-lasting battery; iPhone 13 Pro users not so much.

Cameras

iPhone cameras get more complex every year. There is a lot to digest for the iPhone 14 Pro camera. Maybe too much for the layperson. But you're reading Input, so you like getting nerdy. So let's get really nerdy.

The first thing to know is that the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max cameras are identical. They both have a new, larger 48-megapixel main lens sensor. The two other lenses — the ultrawide and telephoto — remain 12 megapixels, but they're improved in various ways. This is the first time that Apple has differentiated the iPhone Pro cameras with a higher resolution main lens. For comparison, the iPhone 14 / 14 Plus stick with 12-megapixel sensors for their dual-lens camera system; these should be comparable to the iPhone 13 cameras.

Here are the cameras the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max are working with:

Triple-lens cameras

iPhone 12 Pro / 12 Pro Max:

• Main: 12 megapixels f/1.6
• Ultrawide: 12 megapixels f/2.4
• Telephoto: 12 megapixels f/2.0

iPhone 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max:

• Main: 12 megapixels f/1.5
• Ultrawide: 12 megapixels f/1.8
• Telephoto: 12 megapixels f/2.8

iPhone 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max:

• Main: 48 megapixels f/1.78
• Ultrawide: 12 megapixels f/2.2
• Telephoto: 12 megapixels f/2.8

Immediately, you can see that there's the new 48-megapixel main lens with a smaller f/1.78 aperture. The ultrawide lens aperture is smaller at f/2.2, too. For real DSLR/mirrorless camera lenses, these smaller apertures normally mean worse low-light performance. That's not the case in the iPhone 14 Pros. See, the image sensors for both the 48-megapixel main and ultrawide lenses are actually much larger than the ones in the iPhone 13 Pros: 65 percent larger main lens sensor and "nearly twice the size" for the ultrawide sensor according to Apple. As a result, these larger sensors let in more light, which creates brighter images with greater detail when the lighting is poor. At least that is the claim.

Apple also says it’s improved the iPhone 14 Pros' image pipeline with something called the "Photonic Engine." Per Apple, Deep Fusion (you may know it as "sweater mode"), which takes better images in mid-level luminance to produce sharper images (here's proof it really works), now kicks in earlier when images are processed right after they're clicked. Apple claims the Photonic Engine improves image quality for all three camera lenses. By how much? You’re about to find out in a second.

There is a lot to digest for the iPhone 14 Pro camera.

By default, the iPhone 14 Pros' 48-megapixel sensor takes 12-megapixel photos. If you own an Android phone with a high-megapixel camera, you probably already know how this "pixel binning" process works. But for iPhone users, here's the download: four pixels are combined into a single pixel, which you can think of as like a super pixel. This 48-megapixel sensor, or "quad-pixel sensor" as Apple calls it can do two things: produce a really good 12-megapixel photo (especially for low-light photography) or create an image with more resolution at the full 48-megapixel resolution in ProRAW mode.

This big 48-megapixel sensor also has another trick: it can simulate 2x telephoto images by zooming in on the center of the frame.

Other still photo upgrades in the iPhone 14 Pros' cameras include an "Adaptive True Tone flash" that Apple claims can blast out different amounts of light at different focal lengths and an improved 3x telephoto lens that takes better low-light photos.

Like I said, it is a lot to digest.

Of course, the very first thing I did after setting up the iPhone 14 Pro / 14 Pro Max was turn off the camera's auto macro mode (Settings > Camera > Auto Macro), which I had found extremely disorienting in the iPhone 13 Pros. Next, was start testing the new cameras by hitting New York City's streets.

Main lens

I’ll be honest, my expectations were high for the iPhone 14 Pro’s default 12-megapixel images. The reality is a bit different. Photo details are sharper, with less image noise in almost all kinds of lighting, for sure, but they’re very similar to photos taken with an iPhone 13 Pro. Can you even see any differences in image quality in this outdoor comparison? Unless you zoom in and do a thorough side-by-side comparison, not really.

Shot after shot, outdoor photos looked almost identical between the iPhone 14 Pro and 13 Pro. It was really tough to tell one from the other.

The same thing goes for indoor shots. Photos from the iPhone 14 Pro are a tiny bit sharper, but only if you do comparisons.

48-megapixel ProRAW — The thing you really want to know is whether or not the higher resolution 48-megapixel RAW photos that the iPhone 14 Pro is capable of capturing are legit or not. The simple answer is: yes!

I’ve tested more than my share of Android phones with high-megapixel camera sensors and they’ve always underwhelmed in some way. Apple’s ProRAW DNG was a bit disappointing for the iPhone 13 Pro and 12 Pro; there’s barely more detail to get from a 12-megapixel RAW compared to a 12-megapixel JPEG. Not so with 48-megapixel ProRAW files; these images are massive (often clocking in between 70-80MB) and the amount of detail you can get is borderline nuts for a phone. See for yourself. Below are two images. The left one is a 12-megapixel HEIC image (I had forgotten to turn off HEIC for JPEG, but it doesn’t matter). The image on the right is a 48-megapixel ProRAW image converted to a full-resolution JPEG (because our CMS doesn’t take RAW DNG files).

To give you an idea of the amount of detail a 48-megapixel image has compared to a 12-megapixel one, I share with you the below two images, both opened on my Mac at 100 percent full resolution.

In the 12-megapixel photo, the full-size crop can only zoom so much. But look at the 48-megapixel RAW file below — you can zoom in so much closer. And the detail! It’s really impressive for a smartphone camera. Oftentimes, high-megapixel photos from Android phones means crunchy details. Whatever wizardry Apple is doing with the Photonic Engine is practically magic.

As a smartphone camera junkie and that guy who buys the largest iPhone Pro storage model because he takes way too many photos, there is no going back to 12-megapixel JPEG photos for me. I am gonna be shooting 48-megapixel ProRAW from now on. It’s just too good.

There are caveats to shooting ProRAW. While it works for outdoor photos, it does not work with night mode or flash photography photos; the iPhone 14 Pro camera spits out a 12-megapixel RAW in both cases. It’s a minor letdown since low-light is precisely the kind of photography where RAW can really save an image in post.

Ultrawide lens

Corner to corner, the iPhone 14 Pro’s 12-megapixel ultrawide lens captures less noisy photos. You really have to pixel peep to see the clarity, but it’s there.

Telephoto lens

The iPhone 14 Pro’s faux 2x telephoto really impressed me as well. As I said earlier, the 2x telephoto images are actually zoomed-in 12-megapixel photos taken from the full 48-megapixel sensor. The photos are shockingly solid. They look as good as the photos from the iPhone 12 Pro’s 2x optical telephoto; in low-light, 2x telephoto photos look even better because they get all the benefits of the larger quad-pixel sensor and larger f/1.78 aperture.

Low-light / night

Overall, the iPhone 14 Pro’s low-light photography is improved in my opinion. Not by a huge margin compared to the iPhone 13 Pro, but white balance is more accurate — less yellow. There’s also way less image noise compared to the iPhone 12 Pro and S22 Ultra. The image from the latter camera has such mushy details compared to the iPhone 14 Pro.

For low-light ultrawide photography, the iPhone 14 Pro takes better shots with slightly more definition and less noticeable flaring. It’s miles better than the iPhone 12 Pro and a much better image than the S22 Ultra’s brighter, but blurrier photo.

The iPhone 14 Pro is not without some shortcomings for low-light photography. Some of my close-up low-light comparisons had longer lens flares coming off bright objects and colors could come out flatter, with less vibrancy and contrast compared to the same image taken with the iPhone 13 Pro. The iPhone 14 Pro’s main camera can sometimes favor exposing more shadow details at the expense of color vibrance. It’s something that can be fixed with a few edits (easily within the iPhone’s Photos app), but it did give me some pause.

Portrait mode

Portrait mode photos look about the same if you ask me. The iPhone 14 Pro’s machine learning models do a good job blurring out the background with the 2x digital crop-in telephoto portrait mode. It’s very comparable to the iPhone 12 Pro’s optical 2x telephoto portrait.

Same goes for the 3x optical portrait mode comparison between the iPhone 14 Pro and 13 Pro. They look pretty similar in terms of depth of field. The differences are subtle. James’ skin tone in the iPhone 14 Pro portrait is less red than in the 13 Pro shot. You can also see how the bokeh balls are rendered a bit differently in the background. I might actually prefer the iPhone 13 Pro’s bokeh here; you can make out the red and orange of the exit sign lights in the background whereas it’s more red in the iPhone 14 Pro picture.

Selfie camera

It’s hard to believe that the iPhone 14s are the first iPhones with autofocus in the selfie cameras. But here we are. While image quality is more or less the same in good lighting and marginally better in darker scenes, the autofocus does do its job of locking onto your face (or multiple faces). I am not the biggest selfie taker so autofocus for the front camera is less important to me, but if you do shoot a lot of selfies, you’re gonna appreciate it.

• iPhone 12 Pros: 12 megapixels f/2.2
• iPhone 13 Pros: 12 megapixels f/2.2
• iPhone 14 Pros: 12 megapixels f/1.9 with autofocus

Some 100 percent crops of my face for you stans out there who want to see all my pores.

Video upgrades

I'll keep this section short: the iPhone 14 Pros take the best videos in a smartphone. Period. Android phones tout 8K video recording and all kinds of buzzwordy modes for video stabilization, but the iPhone is still the best for video capture.

Cinematic mode — Apple's upped the resolution for Cinematic mode from 1080p / 30 fps on the iPhone 13 Pros to 4K HDR / 30 fps (or in 24 fps for that real cinema-like look). Nice! But the whole "rack focus" thing can still leave a lot to be desired. If you were turned off by Cinematic mode's limitations, you won't find any big improvements here. The background blur is a smidge cleaner around subject edges, but mostly still rough.

Action mode — This video stabilization mode should be turned on by default. That's how good it is at capturing smooth video. I get why it's not: it only records at a max 2.8K resolution at up to 60 fps compared to the regular video mode's max 4K / 60 fps. But holy cow, the stabilization is unreal. Here's a comparison video between an iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro with Action mode turned on. Both are recording with the main lens at 30 fps, but because the iPhone 14 Pro tops out at 2.8K resolution, its field of view is cropped in.

I'm calling it now: there's no need for a gimbal with Action mode turned on. It's just that good.

Should you buy the iPhone 14 Pro?

iPhones are like candy — they're addictive as hell. People want the latest iPhone even if they don't need it. You've read my thoughts on the Dynamic Island (awesome), the 48-megapixel camera (fantastic), the A16 Bionic chip (leaves Android in its dust), and the battery life (still terrific). There are two features that I didn’t get to test (crash detection and emergency SOS via satellite); these are features you hope you’ll never need. At Apple Park, I did get a real demo of the emergency SOS feature. It works, but satellite connectivity can be iffy without a direct line of sight.

Long story short: the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max are winners. But we're also in (or close to) a recession; everyone should spend their money wisely.

If like me, you've got an iPhone 12 or older — perhaps it's slow or damaged or both — and you're sticking with iPhone, the iPhone 14 Pros are superb. You'll love all of its new features and have zero FOMO because you're getting Apple's best iPhone.

iPhone 13 users — maybe. If you've got a regular iPhone 13 / 13 mini and you're feeling the Dynamic Island, better camera system, and always-on ProMotion display, then yes. Otherwise, you could totally make it another year and wait for the iPhone 15. iPhone 13 Pro users might not see enough to upgrade here. You could probably live without the Dynamic Island; the always-on display is nice, but not a must-have; and unless you plan to take 48-megapixel photos all the time or shoot a ton of video with Action Mode on, the iPhone 13 Pro camera is still right up there.

The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max are winners.

If you've got an iPhone with a Touch ID home button, maybe it's time to move on and get with the times. Otherwise, your only option is to get an iPhone SE (third-gen). Hey, do what you want. It supports iOS 16 so you'll at least get the new customizable lock screen.

Android users — yes, no, maybe. Yes, if you want a phone that has one of the best camera systems available and will be supported with software updates for many years to come. No, if you're a diehard Android fan who refuses to submit to Apple's less flexible platform; perhaps you're already sold on foldables like Galaxy Z Fold 4 or Z Flip 4; or just need a camera zoom that goes beyond 3x optical like what you get on the Galaxy S22s. And maybe? I dunno — you could be two-phone guy, in which case buy or don't buy, you probably already have some idea.

Nike is raring to put a scorpion under your feet, but the last thing it wants is for you to be stung.

Today, the sportswear giant is introducing the Air Max Scorpion, a sneaker with a colossal airbag and an origin story every bit as unusual as its appearance. At first glance, it’s an oddball, but so too were the Vapormax and Air Max 270, two runaway hits for Nike.

The Air Max Scorpion, which will release on October 5 for $250, boasts more Air than any other Nike sneaker in terms of pounds per square inch. The pods that house the namesake cushioning are also the brand’s most complex yet, as the geometric shape replaces what has traditionally been rounded-off tubes. Visible gaps within the midsole reveal strategically placed contact points between the foot and the airbag, which helps to facilitate a smooth transition in each stride.

When viewed in profile, you’ll see the Air Max unit sandwiched by what are essentially two plates. Up top, and directly under your feet, is the TPU plate creating the contact points that make the airbag flex in a variety of dimensions. Down low, closest to the ground, is an outsole that’s been computationally optimized to increase traction. The Air Max Scorpion’s upper may not be the focal point, but for an added sense of tactile pleasure, chenille yarn — used for the very first time in Flyknit — adds plushness to the sock-like fit.

Although not overtly made for performance, the Air Max Scorpion applies the Nike mantra “If you have a body you’re an athlete” to city life. The sneaker was designed to be worn all day and support its wearers in those brief bouts of athleticism to, say, run up the stairs and catch the subway just in time. Nike even simulated such situations in its lab to ensure the sneaker lives up to its urban purpose, as stairs and curbs become the field of play.

“There's some people that tell us they navigate the city and kind of turn it into a playground,” Kathy Gomez, VP of footwear innovation for Nike, tells Input. “They'll find streets that aren't super crowded so they can go faster, or they'll take an extra hill. It's like they think of it as a game or a workout, so that inspires us to solve for ways that make sense for their needs.”

Eighteen months of development went into the Air Max Scorpion, making it the first Nike sneaker to go through its entire design and production cycle during the pandemic. The team working on the shoe did so from home, and timing ended up accelerating the application of technologies that would have been adopted later on otherwise.

Virtual reality allowed designers to sketch in three dimensions, while new simulation software drastically cut down the time needed to test different iterations of the design. A single concept would have required eight weeks to test previously, but for the Air Max Scorpion, Nike was able to test several iterations in just five weeks. With these new tools, Nike didn’t need to produce as many samples as usual, which helped save resources in addition to time. Once the team actually got their hands on a physical mold, it was much closer to the final result than it would have been by using past processes.

“The gestural sketching allows you to have an idea very fast,” says Andy Cain, VP of footwear product design for Nike. “You just drop a few curves, you can surface it, you can look at it in all dimensions, and then you can print it. It unlocks a barrier and puts the designer in a place where they can be quite creative. It's really fun at the same time. I ended up spending way too many hours [in VR] obsessing because you can solve things really early."

Another challenge made easier by the new tech was ensuring that the Air Max units performed the same across different-sized shoes. Typically, Nike would begin by designing a sample size 10, and shrinking or enlarging the sneaker could lead to deviations in performance. Thanks to computational engineering, tweaking the geometry of the Air Max Scorpion became much easier and ensures the same experience across all sizes.

Prior to the pandemic, Nike would generally need 22 to 24 months to produce a new sneaker from start to finish. Not only has the Swoosh cut down the time needed by a quarter, but it’s also figured out how to pack more complicated designs into that truncated window. The Air Max Scorpion is just the starting point for the new technologies that helped create it, and we’ll just have to wait and see what else Nike’s designers cook up with their heads in the clouds of VR.

Collina Strada is expanding its sustainable styles from head to toe. The brand unveiled an array of green footwear styles during its Spring/Summer 2023 New York Fashion Week show, adding hiking sandals and low-cut loafers to its offerings. Made in partnership with eco-friendly brands Virón and Melissa, the shoes are made of 100 percent recyclable PVC and bio-based EVA.

Held at the Naval Cemetery Landscape, which houses a monarch butterfly preserve, the NYFW showcase took its name and theme from milkweed, the only plant monarch caterpillars eat. Models fluttered their arms up and down as they walked to channel butterfly wings, while the show’s notes reveal Collina Strada’s new footwear was inspired by the insects themselves. The brand's founder Hillary Taymour, an outspoken advocate for conscious design, wrote that the designs are meant to pay tribute to “the butterfly’s symbolic cycle of life, death, and rebirth.”

Earth comes first — Rebirth is emphasized in Collina Strada’s collaboration with Melissa, which makes its shoes from Melflex, a 100 percent recyclable plastic. Together, they created the Puff, a chunky hiking sandal with a “melting” midsole. They also made the Possession, a twist on Melissa's signature jelly sandal that taps into ‘90s nostalgia with a woven upper and buckled ankle strap. Both shoes are offered in hot pink, lavender, and a batch of glittery color schemes to fit into Collina Strada’s joyful aesthetic. And in keeping with the brand’s sustainability efforts, the pairs feature fully recyclable PVC that provides resistance and elasticity, as well as bio-based EVA insoles derived from sugar cane.

For its partnership with Virón, Collina Strada introduced five more sustainable styles. The two brands put forth three low-cut loafers and two boots, each of which continues the flamboyant and colorful theme of the other footwear. The loafers, dubbed the Lowtops, come decked out with maximalist ruffle details made of deadstock velvet while the boots arrive in metallic silver and velvet iterations.

Spread your wings — This season, don’t choose between fashion and sustainability. Collina Strada’s fully recyclable partnership with Melissa is now available at Collina Strada’s website with prices ranging from $90 to $179. The collection of sustainable sandals will soon be joined by Virón’s deadstock fabric loafers and boots, which are expected to release in the coming weeks. Make sure to grab a pair before they’re gone, as limited stock is available.

Twitter’s shareholders have officially voted in favor of Elon Musk’s proposed $44 billion buyout of the company. And that’s even with Musk shouting across the ring that he doesn’t want the deal to go through. The majority approval isn’t exactly surprising; with Twitter stock currently riding around the $41-per-share mark, shareholders would profit from Musk’s bid.

Shareholder approval allows Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk to move forward in the Delaware Court of Chancery. That lawsuit was filed after Musk attempted to back out of the deal he’d signed to acquire Twitter at a price of $54.20 per share.

In an alternate timeline — one where Musk never decided to reverse course after signing a legally binding agreement — shareholder approval would be a big win for him. But we live in this reality, whether we want to or not, and therefore this approval is just another nail in Musk’s coffin.

Remind me where we’re at? — Does anyone else feel like this drama has been playing out for years now? Just us? Turns out it’s been less than half a year: Musk first proposed his buyout in April, a move many at Twitter quickly rejected. But then Musk actually secured the required funds and Twitter accepted his offer.

In the intervening months, Musk has tried many times over to terminate the agreement. Musk’s running argument is that there are far more fake accounts — spam and bots, mostly — on Twitter than the company will fess up to. Twitter has gone as far as to give Musk access to its “fire hose” of data, including every tweet being sent on the site, to quell those concerns.

Since that tactic hasn’t made much of a dent, Musk is now trying to work on an angle involving security-executive-turned-whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko. (Zatko’s disclosures have almost no bearing at all on Musk’s arguments, but that’s not stopping Musk from abusing every possible angle here.)

Kind of a no-brainer — This week’s shareholder approval means Twitter and Musk’s legal teams will face off in court beginning next month. We’re expecting plenty of mess, especially from Musk’s side of the court.

After all this drama, shareholders would almost certainly come out as losers if Musk’s deal fell apart. The price of Twitter stock has gone up 26 percent in the last six months — but that price will surely plummet if the Musk buyout fails. Given the stakes, choosing Musk’s $54.20 per share is really the only competent move for shareholders looking to profit from the chaos.

At our current cultural moment, the desire to Get Rich Quick has been cranked up a notch. Whether that’s through emerging technologies, outright scams, or through a cult-like dedication to cryptocurrency. And despite an ongoing free fall in Bitcoin (the price has fallen about 54 percent over the past year), crypto investors apparently still believe in the currency’s ability to make them rich.

A study conducted in mid-July, by The Harris Poll, found that 44 percent of Americans believe they have “the available tools” at their disposal to become future billionaires. The largest demographic of people within this sample size happened to be crypto investors, with a whopping 71 percent of digital currency holders agreeing with the following statement: “I believe I have the available tools to become a billionaire in the future.”

About 2,000 people were polled in the survey, which focused on general attitudes towards billionaires, namely whether or not such an achievement was desirable, if these people contribute to society, and the way our country handles this kind of wealth accumulation.

Additional stats — Optimism about achieving extreme wealth was heavily concentrated in younger generations, with a majority of participants claiming they could become billionaires, belonging to either Gen Z or millennial age groups.

Perhaps the omnipresence and mainstream acceptance of money-making options, fueled by trends like the rise of mobile sports betting, seems to have altered general perceptions of how wealth is accumulated.

Before we were able to access risky investment-making through the devices in our pockets, investing in anything, let alone gambling, required a number of hoops to jump through. Want to play the stock market? You have to find a stock broker. Have a feeling about the Knicks this year? I’m sure a bookie would be willing to take money off your hands.

Digital downfall — Crypto manages to turn this dream for sudden, life-altering money into a painful feedback loop for a number of its adopters, with new entrants suffering the most. For every success story, there are also a good portion of people that have done worse than expected in the markets. This also excludes the fact that the extraction process is doing a number on the planet.

Despite evidence of crypto’s fallibility, a downturn clearly hasn’t been enough to deter crypto’s biggest evangelists, even if the proverbial rocket ship to unparalleled wealth is actually plummeting towards Earth, not hurdling toward the moon.

Nissan’s Leaf, an early popular all-electric vehicle, can officially use the bidirectional charging capabilities that have long been built into its circuitry. The automaker has partnered with Fermata Energy to release an official charger — the FE-15 — capable of tapping into the Leaf’s bidirectional charging, sending stored energy back into a home or grid system.

Bidirectional charging, also known as a “Vehicle-to-Home” or “Vehicle-to-Grid” system (though Fermata prefers “Vehicle-to-Everything”), is quickly becoming the buzziest technical feature in the EV industry. The much-hyped F-150 Lightning includes the feature, for example, and General Motors has gone a step further by partnering with PG&E in California to test bidirectional charging as a standard home power backup feature.

All Nissan Leaf vehicles from 2013 onward can now use the FE-15 charger for reverse-charging purposes, as long as they’re fitted with a CHAdeMO charging unit.

Some caveats for now — The V2X bidirectional charger can be ordered through Fermata’s website — though a price has not been provided, and hitting the “order now” button simply opens an email to the general Fermata Energy info address. This launch announcement is really just for commercial and government fleet owners — meant to be used by businesses and government agencies rather than home users.

Approval for home use will come at a later date (though how long the wait will be on that one is very unclear). Still, that promise could present a significant reason for Leaf owners to keep their vehicles, and for would-be EV consumers to consider the Leaf as an option for their next car. (Even the latest model of the Leaf includes that CHAdeMO charging port, despite the protocol quickly going out of vogue in the industry writ large.)

Better battery backups — Bidirectional charging is one of those features that really bring future-forward potential to electric vehicles. We’re crafting these massive, modern batteries — why wouldn’t we give those batteries the ability to be used for secondary purposes? Ford’s really been pushing this ability in marketing the F-150 Lightning; what if you could boost another EV’s dead battery while out on the highway, for example?

Tesla is the only automaker that’s explicitly expressed disinterest in building bidirectional charging into its EVs. That’s no surprise, though; the company’s Powerwall fulfills that purpose.

While some critics have spent the last decade arguing about whether or not video games should be considered “art,” NYC’s Museum of Modern Art has been amassing a spectacular collection.

Individual titles from MoMA’s 36-game collection have, at times, been displayed for consumption at the museum, but its latest exhibition, entitled Never Alone: Video Games and Other Interactive Design, gives them an unprecedented amount of space and analysis. Never Alone is about as interactive as a MoMA exhibition could be, with 10 playable games ranging from Pac-Man to Minecraft. All 36 titles are represented through video alongside other curated displays.

Visiting the exhibition — which is, by the way, free and open to the public — is a quick exercise in synthesis. Senior curator Paola Antonelli and collection specialist Paul Galloway have, along with a small team, divided Never Alone into three pillars: The Input, The Designer, and The Player. Each section contains both games and other elements of interactive design (like Susan Kare’s sketchbook containing original Mac icons). The visitor is tasked with collecting experiences (i.e., playing games) and considering how each contributes to a larger discussion of interactive design via these categories.

The full glory of MoMA’s video game collection must be imagined, here. This is just a taste, an invitation to go home and learn more.

Both Antonelli and Galloway have spent many years working on curating MoMA’s video game collection, with Never Alone the first time that collection has been given the full gallery treatment. Input talked with Antonelli and Galloway ahead of the exhibition’s opening to learn more about translating the curation process to cover video games and how gaming has changed our lives for good.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How long have you been curating Never Alone? What has that process been like?

ANTONELLI: It’s not really about curating the exhibition but rather about forming this collection; this exhibition is a display of a collection that’s been in the works for more than 10 years. When MoMA decides to begin collecting a new category of objects, it does so in a very deliberate way, we create a real case and argument for it. We started that back in 2006, believe it or not, we made the decision to collect film titles and fonts and interactive designs. MoMA has existed since 1929, and our collections document the art of a time. As time changes, our collections have to evolve with it.

GALLOWAY: We developed criteria for collecting video games that was really a kind of taxonomy for taking apart a game and looking at its constituent parts. Everything from the behavior of the player, the shaping of space, the manipulation of time — because, of course, video games are a time-based medium — and aesthetics, which is of course a very important consideration for an art museum. It helped us create a way of framing every game that’s under consideration.

Does this exhibition cover all of MoMA’s video games then?

GALLOWAY: Yes. This isn’t the first time we’re showing video games at the museum and it won’t be the last. That’s a key difference between what our project is and what has been done by other museums — and others have put together really fantastic shows. But for us, these are a recurring presence in the galleries. Sometimes it’s just one or two, but they are part of our collection, and they continue to appear on our walls.

“My idea was to avoid nostalgia... I dreamed of focusing on the behaviors between the person and the machine with no environmental interference.”

The most recent game in the collection is from 2018. Video games have already changed so much since then. Do you have any concerns that the exhibition might not be up-to-date enough?

ANTONELLI: It’s interesting. Every object that we acquire is frozen in time. So we’re not very concerned with updating them but rather in trying to represent a version that shows the full glory of a particular game. So with something like SimCity 2000 or Minecraft we decided to just show one version, for example.

And acquiring video games is so much more complex than it seems. We don’t go out and buy the game — we establish a relationship with the production company, we make sure we’ll have the right to migrate the game and emulate it ourselves — it’s a really big scaffold to create a collection of video games. So we make choices not about the latest or most popular but rather about us showing the world what we think is the greatest expression of contemporary design.

GALLOWAY: And I would emphasize that that thinking is ongoing. The most recent game is from 2018, but we’ve been thinking about that game for several years. Likewise, there are games out right now that we’re evaluating. You have to spend time with these things to really get a full understanding of them.

Were there any cases it was particularly difficult to acquire a game for the museum?

ANTONELLI: I mean, notice there are some games that are missing from the collection. Let’s put it that way. [Laughs.] Well, there’s Zork, for instance, which nobody knows who it belongs to so we can’t acquire it.

GALLOWAY: It really varies. We have titles that come from gigantic studios like Microsoft or Sony, some from small indie studios, we have some from individual designers. It’s, of course, more challenging to deal with a sprawling, corporate behemoth. I’d say for all the games in our collection, though, eventually the parties came around and it wasn’t so difficult. The only ones that were truly difficult didn’t work out in the end.

ANONELLI: Which is sad, but it’s not just this collection. We have similar cases in digital design — it’s not just like going out and buying a chair. There are issues of IP, of the end user license agreements. We had to talk some producers into changing the EULA for us.

GALLOWAY: There’s a culture clash. These are IP lawyers spend their time monetizing intellectual property. They do that in a certain way. When you’re asking them instead think of them as cultural objects, they have to reframe it both conceptually and legally.

ANTONELLI: Designers want their work to be in the museum, of course. It’s the lawyers that stop them.

“My relationship with video games is a relationship that makes me feel the pulse, the beating heart of the world.”

No consoles are shown at the gaming stations. Was that an early decision? Was the other side of that — displaying each machine — considered as well?

ANTONELLI: It was an early decision, I’ll take responsibility for it. It was discussed with the original committee of gamers, game designers, and experts, more than 10 years ago. My idea was to avoid nostalgia. You see many exhibitions of video games that are trying to rebuild an arcade — the whole culture and gestalt of an arcade. I dreamed of focusing on the behaviors between the person and the machine with no environmental interference.

I remember at the time I was afraid I would get crucified by the committee. But instead there was an understanding that if you want to see games in their natural habitat you can go to other museums or an arcade. All museums should be part of an ecosystem; you should try not to mimic what others are doing but rather complement it.

GALLOWAY: I strongly agreed at the time. I mean, I’ve been gaming since the ‘80s. I see many of these games and I’m transported to a beanbag with a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a bag of Doritos in my lap. I think the style that Paola developed actually helps me see them in a much more critical manner, because you’re really focused on what your hands are doing with the joystick, you become more aware of what’s happening on screen, too. It really facilitates a critical reading of things we’re often extremely familiar with.

Has organizing and curating this project changed your relationship with video games?

GALLOWAY: Working with Paola for this long on it has made me reevaluate a lot of things I took for granted. I’ve also met all of these amazing designers and it’s really shown me how the way we use video games continues to change. I think for me it’s been looking at the history and how the way we use video games is still evolving — I find that extremely exciting.

ANTONELLI: It hasn’t really changed the way I relate to video games. For me they’re always a temptation I stay away from because otherwise I would get completely sucked in. But this work has also connected video games to the rest of the world for me. They’re the crystal-clear example of interaction design, the same type of design used for something like New York’s MetroCard machines.

Video games, to me, are a great example for distilling something that’s all around us. My relationship with video games is a relationship that makes me feel the pulse, the beating heart of the world. I love them, and I’ll keep on loving them, and I want to see where they will go.

Never Alone is available for viewing (and playing) now through July 16, 2023, at the Museum of Modern Art.

The poop emoji’s time has come and gone, according to a new report from Adobe. In a (granted, small) survey of 5,000 “frequent emoji users” in the U.S., the company found that the poop emoji 💩 — or “Pile of Poo” as it is more formally called — was the least favorite emoji across multiple generations of responders.

Emoji trends — Adobe’s data doesn’t just put the nail in the coffin for depictions of defecation. The “Future of Creativity: 2022 U.S. Emoji Trend Report,” as the company calls it, has several insights on emoji use that are interesting, if not entirely surprising.

There are some findings you’d expect: the majority of U.S. emoji users (91 percent) believe that emoji make it easier to express themselves, and most emoji users (again 91 percent) include them to “lighten the mood of a conversation.”

Other findings are more out there. Apparently, the cowboy hat face emoji 🤠 is one of the most misunderstood emoji in circulation due to the nuanced nature of its current meaning. The cowboy has shifted from “Yeehaw” (I’m joyfully herding cattle) to “Yeehaw” (I’m angry/sad, but keeping my hat on, so to speak). According to the report, 44 percent of responders thought it represented a cowboy, while none identified the newer, nuanced meaning. Adobe found similar issues with the cherries 🍒, kissing face 😗, and billed cap 🧢 emoji as well.

Dating etiquette — The strangest finding, though, has to be the statistics Adobe compiled on emoji use in dating. Obviously, Adobe found that using an eggplant emoji 🍆 on dating apps makes you less likable. No, I’m talking about the 21 percent of people Adobe found that ended a relationship with an emoji. What the hell!?

Methodology — Adobe surveyed 5,000 emoji users in the U.S. and then collected an oversample of 500 surveys each from California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas. Obviously, that means the results aren’t completely comprehensive (Adobe didn’t reach out to everyone who owns a copy of Photoshop, for example) but they give some sense of the national mood towards emoji.

Surprising results or not, Adobe’s report does prove what you might have already known is true: emoji are here to stay and as natural to use as normal written communication. If you can comment on a document in productivity software with emoji, we’ve probably reached saturation. The real question is where emoji show up next.

For all of us who want to amp up the bass of our home theater setup but lack the space, there’s finally a solution from Sonos. The company announced its Sub Mini, a much lighter and lower-profile subwoofer compared to its third-generation Sub.

Those of us who already familiar with Sonos soundbars and speakers have been waiting for a more affordable subwoofer that’s built for smaller spaces. The wait hit a boiling over point when leaked photos of the Sub Mini circulated the web a week ago. Now, we finally have a Sonos subwoofer that’s better for apartments or smaller rooms.

Perfect pairing — Sonos built the Sub Mini with dual six-inch woofers that are meant provide better bass for your home entertainment system. The woofers face inward and create a force-cancelling effect that gets rid of any distortion, but it also uses advanced processing for a better bass response.

The Sub Mini works off 5 Ghz Wi-Fi, which is how it pairs with the rest of your audio setup. You can easily set up the Sub Mini through the Sonos app and face the subwoofer whichever direction you want since it’s purposely designed for flexbile placement.

The Sub Mini works better with Sonos’ smaller products, like the Beam and Ray soundbars, along with the One or One SL. Sonos says the Sub Mini can also technically pair with the Arc, but will work a lot better when the two are used in a smaller room at low- to moderate volume levels.

Mini magic — The Sub Mini is available for preorder and will come in black or white colorways. Priced at $429, it’s a lot more affordable the the third-gen Sub’s $749 price tag. The Sub Mini is expected to ship on October 6.

It may have less range and power than Sonos’ third-gen Sub, but the Sub Mini could be the perfect size for those just looking to get more bass for their room or studio apartment. Or maybe you’re just in the market for a subwoofer that’s far less conspicuous.

Robots clean our floors, deliver our food, and even try on our bras before we do. Now, Nike is creating robots to do more mundane chores in an effort to extend the life of its footwear. A robot-augmented system recently launched by the Swoosh can clean and repair shoes in minutes, while also reducing waste in the process.

The Bot Initiated Longevity Lab, lovingly referred to as BILL, is Nike’s latest initiative to cut sneaker waste and ensure customers are getting maximum use out of their shoes. Does this mean sneakerheads will feel encouraged to wear their multi-hundred dollar sneakers more? Probably not. But for the average customer, giving a favorite pair of everyday Nikes a free, robot-grade refresh should be a welcome innovation.

BILL, still in its pilot phase, can work its magic on a number of Nike styles. A database of 3D sneaker renderings helps the bot follow the exact silhouette and target specific areas for repair and cleaning. Nike didn’t disclose if the system will solely focus on scuffs and general wear-and-tear or deeper issues such as fabric rips and dissolved glue.

A bot we can stand behind — Nike’s ultimate goal is to improve sustainability through robotics, but the company still wants the recycling technology service to feel personal. After the exterior has been restored, Nike store employees will then swap out the sneaker liners with new ones made of recycled materials. The Swoosh is a leader in footwear sustainability; BILL joins existing sneaker, apparel, and packaging initiatives.

While there are plenty of home remedies that can turn you into a modern-day cobbler, Nike NXT sustainability lead Noah Murphy-Reinhertz said BILL will speed up the process while still preserving sentimentality. “The thing is, maintaining old product is deeply personal,” he said in a statement. “People will go to great lengths to care for their favorite shoes. Repairing a product is a way to extend our memory with a product.”

For now, BILL is limited to the Nike Town London store. Shoppers can use the service for free throughout September, and insights will help Nike determine the next steps for the robot and other tech. We’re hoping BILL makes it to the States because there’s nothing cute about a dirty Air Force 1.

A release date for the coveted Arc’teryx and Beams “Dimensions” collection is finally on the horizon. Just in time to put the pieces to proper use, the grail-level outdoor gear drops Thursday online and at the Arc’teryx Broadway store in New York City. Collectors and fans will be able to secure bags and outerwear that were previously exclusive to Japan.

Calling back to the brands’ first collaboration in 2001 and subsequent follow-ups, the Dimensions capsule contains various pieces in the iconic patchwork design. The thinking behind the pattern is to combine a bird’s eye view with that of a human from ground level. Muted white, beige, black, and gray panels on the patchwork create the namesake’s dimensions, almost like what you would see looking out of a plane.

A look at the grails — First in the lineup is the Beta Jacket, which sports weatherproof Gore-Tex and Fore-Knit backer tech. You can wear the jacket without disturbing the peace thanks to silent framing that silences movements. The patchwork is the main design element here, while the Arc’teryx bird logo is perched on the sleeve.

Mantis 1 and 2 waist packs are also up for sale alongside a Mantis 26 backpack. The waist packs alternate between the patchwork motifs and a white monochrome look. The more muted look also carries over to the Mantis 26 backpack, which is finished off with gray and beige zippers and straps. The Mantis 26 has 26 liters of storage, while the Mantis 1 and 2 have 1.5 liters and 2.5 liters, respectively.

If HighSnobiety’s predictions are correct, expect to pay $420 for the Gore-Tex Beta jacket, $45 for the Mantis 1 waist pack, $50 for the Mantis 2 waist pack, and $165 for the Mantis 26 backpack. Those who partook in the earlier global releases are already listing their piecesinto the thousands, so you’ll want to act fast if you don’t want to become prey for the resale market.

Doors open at 9 a.m. ET Thursday, September 15, at the Arc’teryx Broadway store in New York City. If you were hoping to grab one of everything, the brands are one step ahead of you, as each person can only purchase one jacket and one accessory. An exact release time for the website is still under wraps, so you may want to keep hitting refresh throughout the day.

Puma is finally releasing the Stewie 1, the signature sneaker for Olympian and two-time WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart. The kicks, first worn by the Seattle Storm forward during the WNBA All-Star Game, are the league’s first signature sneakers to debut since Candace Parker’s in 2010.

After relaunching its basketball division in 2019, Puma committed to providing a more equal playing ground for female athletes, who are often overlooked in comparison to their male counterparts. The brand launched its Women’s Hoops division in 2021 and chose Stewart to spearhead its first women’s signature sneaker, a decision she saw as an opportunity for change in the sports industry. “I hope that [the Stewie 1] is the first in a legacy of signature sneakers to come for women athletes across all sports,” Stewart said in a press release. “[The Stewie 1] serves as inspiration for all young people that this, along with any achievement, is possible.”

Baller — Stewart’s sneaker is certainly hard to miss. A fluorescent green shade covers the front half of the shoe before giving way to molded black heels, which boast a flame graphic that melts into the midsole like ripples of water. The design pays tribute to Stewart’s lifelong athletic journey, nodding to both her high school team and her two Achilles tendon surgeries. The latter is depicted through scar graphics at the heels, complemented by the player’s logo on the tongue and insoles.

With a focus on female athletes, the Stewie 1 has been built to maximize performance while adapting to women’s anatomy. The sneaker is significantly sleeker than most men’s basketball silhouettes and provides targeted support through its multi-zoned monomesh layers. Breathable mesh dresses the upper as molded heel counters offer support and stability. Puma’s signature Nitro Foam cushioning also provides wearers with premium responsiveness and comfort.

Nothing but net — A highlight on the court and in WNBA history, the Stewie 1 is set to release on September 16. Pairs will be available at Puma’s website, the brand’s NYC flagship store, and at retailers including Dick’s Sporting Goods, with accompanying apparel pieces set to drop in October. Prices range from $35 to $140, and you’ll have to move fast to secure what you want.

Signature sneakers in the WNBA have been few and far between, but the Stewie 1 is already helping to pave the way for more. Last month, Nike announced it would give Washington Mystics player Elena Delle Donne her own signature shoe, the Air Deldon, while Adidas and Candace Parker are in the midst of readying their next sneaker together. Looks like the ball is finally entering the women’s court.

When traveler Daniele Brito posed in front of the Temple Bar in Dublin, Ireland in late August, she likely didn’t realize the camera was watching her.

Yes, there was the one pointed at her, capturing a photograph that would later be shared to Brito’s more than 2,700 followers on Instagram. But there was at least one other one observing her: a surveillance camera stationed on the corner opposite the bar.

Brito’s photo — and the surveillance video of her — became part of Belgian artist Dries Depoorter’s project The Follower, which he unveiled on social media yesterday. Depoorter programmed an artificial intelligence system that uses open-access video footage from cameras stationed around the world in order to spot people. It then crosschecks those individuals with Instagram photographs posted from locations those cameras cover, seeing if it can find a match.

Depoorter, 31, gained attention last year for his project The Flemish Scrollers, which used AI to tag Belgian politicians distractedly scrolling on their phones during livestreamed meetings. Depoorter declines to share the usernames of any of those caught up in his latest project, though it is simple enough to find them through reverse-engineering. (That’s how Input figured out Brito’s identity; she did not respond to a request for comment.)

Depoorter, however, will reveal that The Follower came about out of boredom as he remotely observed the habits of an apparent influencer. “I’ve been doing projects with open cameras for years,” Depoorter says. “One day, I was watching one camera, and there was a person taking photos for like half an hour, really professionally. That was the starting point.” Depoorter manually searched for the resultant photos on Instagram using the platform’s location-tagging functionality, but couldn’t find them.

So he decided to code a tool that pulls in surveillance camera footage that is close to the ground — the better to identify people more accurately — and at tourist sites where people are likely to take photographs. Most of the software he uses is off-the-shelf. In all, Depoorter analyzed four weeks’ worth of photos, coming up with a number of hits.

Depoorter ducks discussion of what goals he hoped to achieve. “I know which questions it raises, this kind of project,” he says. “But I don’t answer the question itself. I don’t want to put a lesson into the world. I just want to show the dangers of new technologies.”

‘The digital gaze’

For Mariann Hardey at England’s Durham University, who has previously studied surveillance’s pervasiveness, the project is an indication of how deeply being watched is entrenched in our lives.

“The digital gaze permeates network architecture and social and cultural structures,” she says in an emailed response. “The Follower provides fascinating insight into creativity that is fundamentally dependent on smartphone technology and exposes the frivolity of digital culture in how influencers experiment with posed images and techniques within the social landscape.”

Francesca Sobande, senior lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media, and Culture in Wales, is more circumspect about the impact of the project. “Art does many great things, including stir generative discussions and debate about life as we know it,” she tells Input. “However, art projects can also have harmful effects. Such harms should not be brushed aside in discussions about art and the technology that is sometimes central to it.”

“For me, it’s more about the technology and not about the people I used.”

Sobande highlights that extensive research has shown how AI and open cameras are used as “part of the structural surveillance of people, particularly individuals impacted by racism, xenophobia, and other intersecting forms of oppression. There is a history of AI and open cameras playing a core part in the violent policing of protests and dissent, and this history cannot be ignored in the name of art.

“For these reasons,” Sobande continues, “any project that involves AI and open cameras is a project that may, unfortunately, reinforce a societal state of surveillance that can put people’s lives at risk.”

Depoorter doesn’t seem to have such concerns. “For me, it’s more about the technology and not about the people I used,” he says. “I used a lot of people, so there’s no focus on one person.” When Input points out that he showed those peoples’ unblurred faces in his project, making it possible to identify them, Depoorter replies, “Yes, but they posted the pictures also.”

At least one of the project’s subjects is extremely unhappy. The Follower also identified Renata Costa and her partner Cleison kissing outside the Temple Bar. When contacted, Cleison declined to talk via Instagram video call, believing Input was behind the project. “I would like you to delete my photo... immediately,” Cleison writes. “It’s a crime to use the image of a person without permission.” Cleison says he’ll be contacting his lawyers.

Allbirds’s latest sneaker is as easy on the eyes as it is on the planet. The Plant Pacer marks the sustainable footwear brand’s first foray into plant-based products, making for a shoe that eliminates the need for plastic and is 100 percent vegan.

The leather-free sneaker uses a natural recipe of rubber, plant oils, rice hulls, and citrus peels. Rubber still isn’t the most eco-friendly material, but the other ingredients help make for a shoe that produces 88 percent less carbon than those that use traditional animal leather and 75 percent less compared to synthetic pleathers.

A canvas version of the Plant Pacer made with organic cotton is also on its way. It will arrive in beige, teal, black, and white to match your minimal look, with a white, curved sole on each. The plant-based version is given white and minty green treatments with the same curvy midsole. Both canvas and plant-based models are lined with Allbirds’s signature tree material, while the midsole is equipped with SweetFoam cushioning.

Pacing the Pacer — Natural Fiber Welding (NFW), a company that specializes in natural materials, lent a hand in the shoes’ construction. Per a press release, the Pacer’s design mirrors Allbirds’s “focus on creating products that can reflect the consumer's unique sense of fashion and desire for versatility without losing the sustainability Allbirds is known for.” But the techno bros and dads that wear Allbirds don’t brag much fashion sense at all, and the sneaker teeters the edge between versatile and vanilla.

Will Allbirds ever be all that? — For the past few years, Allbirds has attempted to up its street cred through collaborations with more stylish brands and innovative releases. Points are awarded for the Pacer’s slightly creative wavy sole and boost of sustainability, but it may find difficulty holding up to better-looking eco-conscious kicks.

The footwear industry has been pulling out all the stops to reduce its carbon footprint. Some are putting good use to invasive marine species, while others take inspiration from the farmer's market with fruit- and veggie-based kicks. Still, some experts suggest using even the most sustainable materials doesn’t stop creating waste.

You can shop the Pacer collection on the Allbirds site. The Plant Pacers will run you about $135, while its canvas counterpart retails for $110. They’re not the most fashion-forward, but anything pushing lasting sustainability is worth taking a second look at.

Amazon’s new entry-level Kindle is less entry-level than ever, with many of the more premium features usually reserved for more expensive models coming to this year’s baseline. The new Kindle looks nearly identical to the 2019 Kindle — it’s just a 6” touch-capacitive E Ink screen with a bezel — but its innards are much more in line with the rest of the 2022 Kindle lineup.

The most noticeable upgrade here is the E Ink screen. The 10th-generation Kindle’s E Ink display rang in at just 167 ppi, a significant step down from the Kindle Paperwhite’s 300 ppi. The 11th-generation Kindle finally bumps that screen up to 300 ppi, a resolution that’s now standard across the Kindle lineup.

The new base Kindle is also being used for the new Kindle Kids — essentially the same e-reader with the addition of a one-year subscription to Amazon Kids+, the company’s “kid-friendly” book subscription service.

Still definitely entry-level — Many of Amazon’s e-readers go through the slightest of changes between generations — so incremental that it’s not really worth upgrading year after year. But it’s been more than three years since this particular Kindle saw any updates, making the 11th-generation Kindle a more noticeable jump.

That said, this is still very much a baseline device. The screen resolution now matches that of more expensive Kindles, yes, but it’s still nearly an inch smaller than the Kindle Paperwhite’s, and the adjustable front light uses far fewer LEDs.

Those trade-offs allow for the Kindle to be significantly less expensive — $40 less! — than the Paperwhite, the model that’s become Amazon’s gold standard for e-readers. Now that the regular-old Kindle has USB-C and 16 GB of internal storage (twice that of the Paperwhite), it’s much more attractive as an inexpensive alternative.

Sustainability upgrade — Amazon, like its close competitor Kobo, is working to make buying an e-reader less stressful on the planet, too. The 11th-generation Kindle’s packaging is 100 percent recyclable in the U.S. and made from wood fiber-based materials from “responsibly managed” forests. And 90 percent of the magnesium used in the new Kindle is recycled.

The new Kindle is available for pre-order today for $99.99, with devices shipping on October 12. The new Kindle Kids, which includes a year of Amazon Kids+, retails for $119.99.

Cryptocurrency isn’t the only industry taking a nosedive right now; every area of the tech world is reeling from budget cuts and sales downturns this year. Layoffs are the new normal, and no job is as steady as it seems. The middle part of 2022 is turning into a veritable layoff landslide.

With announcements of new mass layoffs breaking just about every day now, it’s gotten pretty exhausting to even keep track of everyone affected by this latest wave. We don’t have the time to blog every company’s business, and you don’t have the energy to read about them, either. So we’re just going to keep a running list here as the layoffs roll in. Sigh.

Gaming

• Niantic, developer of Pokémon Go, is cutting 85 to 90 jobs, approximately eight percent of its workforce. The company also canceled four upcoming projects, with CEO John Hanke saying the company is “facing a time of economic turmoil.”
• Unity, which runs the game development engine of the same name, has laid off “hundreds” of employees around the world. Approximately 300 to 400 staffers have been let go so far, and layoffs are still ongoing as of June 29.
• GameStop is laying off an as-of-yet undisclosed number of employees across GameStop and Game Informer. The company’s CFO is stepping down, too.

Cryptocurrency

• Coinbase laid off about 18 percent of its total workforce in mid-June, as the value of most cryptocurrencies plunged.
• Gemini laid off about 10 percent of its employees in early June — approximately 100 staffers. The company further reduced its staff by seven percent in mid-July due to “turbulent market conditions.”
• Crypto.com laid off 260 employees, somewhere around five percent of its workforce, just half a year after investing $700 million to put its name on the Staples Center.
• BlockFi left behind 20 percent of its employees on the same day Coinbase announced its own layoffs.
• Popular NFT marketplace OpenSea is laying off about 20 percent of its workforce due to “an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability.”
• Blockchain.com is cutting about 25 percent of its workforce — about 150 people — and will be shutting down its Argentina-based offices. Expansion in several countries has been canceled.

Internet

• Snap is laying off about 20 percent of its workforce — approximately 1,280 employees — after the company’s stock declined by nearly 80 percent this year.
• Substack is laying off about 14 percent of its staff — 13 of its 90 employees. Most of that baker’s dozen was responsible for human resources and writer support.
• Netflix has laid off about 450 staffers in May and June, with the latest round affecting more than 300 workers. The streaming company said it made the cuts so its costs line up with its “slower revenue growth.”
• Cameo laid off 87 employees in May, with a number of executives departing as well.
• Carvana, the internet’s premier car-buying site, laid off 2,500 people via Zoom in May.
• Tencent and ByteDance are laying off “thousands” of employees across the board as June comes to a close.
• MasterClass laid off 20 percent of its staff in June.
• Clubhouse laid off an undisclosed number of employees in June.
• Twitter laid off about one-third of its talent acquisition team in July after announcing in May that it would pause hiring.
• Microsoft reduced its headcount by less than one percent (of approximately 180,000 employees) as its 2023 fiscal year began, though it hopes to “grow headcount overall” this year.
• Google announced in mid-July that it would be pausing hiring across the company for two weeks. Senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan said in an email to employees that the pause would not affect offers already extended to applicants.
• Shopify laid off 1,000 employees at the end of July — about 10 percent of its staff. Most affected worked in recruiting, support, and sales.
• SoundCloud is reducing its global headcount by about 20 percent, CEO Michael Weissman announced in early August.
• HBO Max laid off about 14 percent of its staff in mid-August, with its original content team being hit hardest. More layoffs are expected.
• Patreon has laid off about 17 percent of its workforce, due to volatility created by the pandemic. The company’s entire security team has been laid off.
• Twilio has laid off about 11 percent of its workforce — more than 800 people — in a move the company’s CEO calls “wise and necessary”

Misc.

• Tesla has laid off approximately 200 employees working on its Autopilot team and shuttered an entire office in San Mateo, California. CEO Elon Musk has said somewhere around 10 percent of Tesla’s salaried staff will lose their jobs in this round of layoffs. The company is also facing a lawsuit over carrying out mass layoffs without notice.
• Robinhood laid off nine percent of its staff back in April, somewhere around 340 people. The company’s meme trading boom didn’t pay off quite as much as it hoped. The company announced in August that it would be further reducing its headcount by a whopping 23 percent. The company’s chief product officer is also stepping down.
• Rivian laid off about six percent of its workforce in late July — some 840 employees — despite its business partnerships finally picking up.