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Threads, Instagram’s answer to Twitter — now known as X — has added a Following tab, allowing you to only see posts from people you follow in chronological order.

A Threads user asked for the feature on Friday and, on Tuesday morning, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Threads’ parent company, Meta, responded, “Ask and you shall receive.”

“Threads started rolling out an option for a chronological feed of only people you’re following,” Zuckerberg posted on his broadcast channel on Instagram.

The Following tab started appearing on both iOS and Android versions of Threads at about the same time, though it’s not yet available to all users.

Here’s how the Following tab works and what other new features have been added.

For more on Threads, find out why you might not want to sign up for the app and why Elon Musk is reportedly threatening legal action against it.

What is the Following tab on Threads?

When Threads launched on July 5, user feeds were populated with posts from other users and brands, regardless of whether you followed them or not.

Now, members who have the Following option can get a chronological feed featuring only posts from people you’ve chosen to follow, with no “suggested” posts.

How to access the Following tab on Threads

Threads still defaults to the “For You” feed, so to make the Following feed appear or disappear, you need to tap on the home icon on the bottom left of the app or the Threads logo on top.

It reverts to “For You” mode if you close the app so, for now, you’ll have to repeat this every time you open it.

If tapping the icon doesn’t change your feed, Following hasn’t been added to your version yet.

What other features has Threads added?

According to Zuckerberg, Threads has also added a translation feature. You can translate a post by tapping a button on the bottom right.

In an update for Threads for iOS on Monday, Apple teased that, “new features [are] coming.”

Instagram head Adam Mosseri has promised several other highly prized features are “on the list” for Threads, according to Forbes, including hashtags, increased search functionality, editable posts, full desktop mode and the ability to limit who can reply to your posts.

How to sign up for Threads

You need an Instagram account to join Threads. If you have one, launch the Threads app and select the Instagram profile you want to make a Threads account for.

Then add your name, biographical info and any links you want to show on your Threads profile. If you want to just duplicate your Instagram profile, you can also just hit the Import from Instagram button.

Then you’ll want to choose the accounts you want to follow. You can select accounts you follow on Instagram one by one or hit Follow all to follow all your Instagram friends.

Smartphone shipments in the US in the second quarter of 2023 dropped by 24% compared with the same period last year, according to analyst firm Counterpoint Research.

Counterpoint’s report, published Friday, said this is the third consecutive quarter of declining US phone shipments.

“Despite inflation numbers falling through the quarter and ongoing strength in the job market, consumers hesitated to upgrade their devices amid market uncertainty,” Counterpoint Research Analyst Matthew Orf said in a press release, noting that he expects shipments to keep declining into the next quarter.

Manufacturers were affected to different extents, with makers of Android phones suffering the most: Samsung shipments dropped by 37%, Motorola shipments by 17% and TCL-Alcatel shipments by 69%. Apple’s iPhone shipments declined by only 6%, which Counterpoint analysts credited to strong carrier promotions subsidizing costs for the brand’s pricey phones — though it also likely reflects how insulated premium phone sales have been from pandemic shipment shocks. Google’s phone shipments increased by 48%, but given that it had only 2% of US phone sales in this period last year, it’s a comparatively tame gain.

Despite lower overall phones shipped, that shakeup has led Apple to increase its domination of the US phone market to 55% from 45% in the same period last year. Meanwhile, Samsung dropped to 23% from 28%. Other phone-makers stayed at roughly the same level.

The phone industry has struggled over the last few years as the pandemic slowed demand and supply shortages interrupted availability. Though supply chains have recovered, it isn’t totally clear how long it’ll take for demand to resume pre-pandemic levels — the International Data Corporation had predicted that the global phone industry would recover 6% year-over-year in 2024.

If you’re looking to upgrade your phone this year, check out CNET’s guidance on the best Android phone currently available, which iPhone is best for you, our first look at Samsung’s new foldable phones and the best cellphone plans of 2023.

Read more: Best Foldable Phones in 2023: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, Z Flip, Moto Razr

Apple could be putting an Action button on your next iPhone. According to a report from MacRumors Wednesday, code in the fourth iOS 17 developer beta hints at functionality for an Action button on the next-gen iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models.

Apple introduced the Action button on the Apple Watch Ultra, and it allows you to run a preselected function or program when activated. On the Apple Watch Ultra, pressing the Action button can start a stopwatch or begin a workout without unlocking your device or navigating to an app.

The report said the Action button on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max could replace the Ring/Silent switch on the side of the iPhone. The Action button could have nine different functions. What each function would do is unclear, but the names of some of the functions, like Camera and Flashlight, indicate the Action button would likely be able to turn these features on and off.

Read more: iPhone 15 Pro Could See Longer Battery Life From New Chip Line

Apple has not announced any information about the next iPhone, but the company will likely unveil details of its next smartphone at the next iPhone event — probably in September.

Apple did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment.

For more, check out why the iPhone 15 might need a different charger, the 15 features we really want to see on the iPhone 15 and hidden features in iOS 17 you should know about.

Google is helping robots accomplish tasks quickly and more efficiently, using technology like the systems powering AI chatbots Bard, ChatGPT, the Claude 2 and others, the company said in a blog post Friday.

Google’s Robotics Transformer 2, or RT-2, is a “first-of-its-kind vision-language-action (VLA) model,” Vincent Vanhoucke, the head of robotics for Google DeepMind, said in the post. Similar to the large language models behind AI chatbots, it trains based on text (and image) data found on the web, to “directly output robotic actions.”

Vanhoucke said getting robots to use AI to understand the world around them is more difficult than what goes into chatbots. Whereas an AI chatbot just needs to absorb a bunch of text data about a particular subject and be able to arrange that information in a manner that’s easy for humans to understand, a robot literally needs to understand the world around it. It’s one thing to recognize an apple. It’s another thing to distinguish between a Red Delicious apple and a red ball and pick up the correct object.

With the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT late last year, there’s been a rush of companies bringing AI tech to market. AI chatbots are already seeping into coding, the college application process and dating apps. Google itself is making artificial intelligence a central focus of its business — as evidenced by the fact that company presenters said “AI” more than 140 times during Google’s two-hour keynote event at its I/O developer conference in May.

Robotics is just another field in which AI models could change how quickly technology gets smarter. And for Google’s investors, the company’s advances in robotics could make for good business. The industrial robotics industry is currently valued at $30 billion and is expected to reach $60 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research.

In the past, engineers looking to train a robot to, say, throw away a piece of trash would first have to train the ‘bot to identify the trash (which involves a lot of parameters), bend down, pick it up, lift it up, bend back, identify a trash can, move its robotic arm over the can and drop the trash. It was, as you may’ve guessed, a slow and monotonous process. Google says that with RT-2, which pulls from troves of image data found online, robots can quickly be trained to understand what trash is and how to pick it up and throw it away.

A robot can use a small amount of training data to “transfer concepts embedded in its language and vision training data to direct robot actions — even for tasks it’s never been trained to do,” said Vanhoucke. In a demonstration given to The New York Times, a robot was able to identify and lift a toy dinosaur when asked to pick up an extinct animal from among a group of other toys. In another challenge, the ‘bot was able to pick up a toy Volkswagen car and move it toward a German flag.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

NASA will be launching its own streaming service later this year, the US space agency said Thursday.

The service, called NASA Plus, will feature live streaming of NASA missions, as well as original video series including new series being produced for the streaming service.

“We’re putting space on demand and at your fingertips with NASA’s new streaming platform,” said Marc Etkind, associate administrator of NASA HQ’s Office of Communications. “Transforming our digital presence will help us better tell the stories of how NASA explores the unknown in air and space, inspires through discovery and innovates for the benefit of humanity.”

NASA Plus will be free and have no ads. It’ll be on streaming media players including Apple TV, Fire TV and Roku, as well as on the iOS and Android NASA app and on desktop.

NASA also said an update of its website and app are coming. “This new web experience will serve as an ever-expanding yet consolidated homebase for information about the agency’s missions and research, climate data, Artemis updates and more,” NASA said in a blog post. You can see the beta version of the new website here.

Read more: Best Streaming Device for 2023: We Tested Roku, Amazon, Apple and More

Hello Kitty and her friends are having fun in the sun in the latest Apple Arcade exclusive title, Hello Kitty Island Adventure. If you subscribe to Apple Arcade ($5, 5 or AU$8 a month), you can play this game at no additional charge, and without ads or in-app purchases.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure was developed in a collaboration between Sanrio and Sunblink, and if you’re a South Park fan the title might sound familiar. The show made a joke in a 2006 episode referencing a game titled Hello Kitty Island Adventure, but this turned out to be purely coincidental.

“Sanrio has no affiliation with South Park,” Jill Koch, Sanrio senior vice president of marketing, sales and business development, said during a press preview of the game.

And it would be weird if this game were connected to South Park. While the show is known for its crass and sometimes off-putting humor, Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a cozy title that feels like a snug, warm blanket.

In the game, you, Hello Kitty and the rest of her friends land on a deserted island resort and work to restore it to its former glory. You can help people open and run shops on the island and furnish and decorate visitor cabins, but that’s only part of the game.

Sunblink’s chief product officer, Chelsea Howe, said Hello Kitty Island Adventure also incorporates the open-world adventure gameplay of games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

You can explore and solve puzzles in a number of dungeons strewn around the island, and you can also traverse different environments, like underwater areas and the inside of a volcano.

There are also crafting and friendship mechanics in the game. You can collect materials from around the island and use them for crafts at certain stations, like a workbench or an oven. You can give some of these items to your friends as gifts, which raises your friendship level with those folks.

Each character likes different things, though, so you can’t just go around giving pineapple cakes to all your friends. Hello Kitty, for example, likes baked goods, fruits and fancy things, so giving her these items will increase your friendship with her by a certain amount — and if you give me baked goods, fruits and fancy things, I too will be your friend.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is a colorful, relaxing and pleasant game that will brighten up your day whether you like pastries, fancy coffee drinks or both.

You can access this game, and many others, in Apple Arcade for $5 a month, or $60 annually. You can also try Apple Arcade for free for one month with your first sign-up, or you can get a three-month free trial when you buy a new Apple device. To access Apple Arcade, open the App Store on your iOS device and tap the joystick in the menu bar.

It’s always a good idea to invest in creating your own personal website or one for your business. After you’ve come up with a name for your new website, you’ll need to decide on the best web-hosting service for you and your needs. Once you’ve found your hosting provider, you’ll then need to pick the plan that fits your setup and budget. And right now, several of our favorite hosting services — including HostGator, NameCheap, and GoDaddy — are offering massive discounts on their plans.

Looking for more discounts on hosting services? CNET has the current best deals from NameCheap, HostGator, GoDaddy and many more, along with promo code offers, updated and verified daily.

Welcome to CNET Coupons, the first stop before you shop, featuring a multitude of deals and discounts from top online retailers. Simply head over to our coupon page and type in your favorite store or brands to find all the deals available for the week.

The iPad Pro is one of the best tablets around and it’s the closest thing to a tablet-shaped laptop replacement in Apple’s ecosystem. But only if you add a keyboard and trackpad and now you can do that for just $58.

The WIWU iPad keyboard case would normally sell for just shy of $100, but if you order now you’ll pay just $58 and save 41%. You don’t need to enter any discount codes or clip any on-screen coupons here, either. Just place that order and wait.

This particular deal relates to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro version, but there’s one that fits the 11-inch model if that’s more your size. The discount isn’t quite as big, but you’ll only pay a couple of dollars more.

Regardless, you’ll be getting a magnetic detachable keyboard that also has a trackpad built in, turning your tablet into a laptop using a process that feels like magic. The case itself provides protection against drops while the 0- to 180-degree tilt makes the stand perfect for watching content or typing essays.

The keyboard itself is backlit for those midnight typing sessions and it’ll run for around 80 hours before it needs charging. Use the keyboard infrequently? It’ll go for up to 150 days before it needs attention.

If adding a keyboard and trackpad to your iPad Pro will boost your productivity make sure to get your order in now while this discount still applies. And make sure that you choose the model that matches your particular tablet.

Have an older Verizon unlimited plan? The carrier would really like you to move to one of its newer (and potentially pricier) options. Starting on Aug. 29 Verizon will be raising the rates for those still on its Go, Beyond, Above and 5G Start unlimited plans by $3 per line, per month.

For Go and Beyond users, this impacts those who were on a later version of these plans dubbed “Go Unlimited 2.0” and “Beyond Unlimited 2.0” by the carrier. The earlier “1.0” versions of these plans saw their own price hikes get revealed back in February.

A support page for the carrier says that the new fee will appear on bills as a “Plan Rate Adjustment.” Those who have basic phones on their account will also see their bills go up by $5 per month, per line.

Verizon says its newer plans aren’t affected by this latest hike. In May it revamped its lineup, distilling its offering to two main unlimited plans while also no longer bundling once-included perks like the Disney Bundle (which includes Disney Plus, ESPN Plus and Hulu).

A Verizon spokesperson says in a statement provided to CNET that the move is being done so that the carrier can “continue improving our industry-leading network and services,” adding that anyone affected “will be notified of a new plan rate adjustment by email, direct mail and in their next bill.”

“We encourage customers to move to the new Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Welcome plan at any time to take advantage of even more value and perks of their choice.”

The new increase is the latest from Verizon as it continues to look to maximize revenue from existing accounts. While its consumer division continued to lose customers in its most recent quarter, the carrier said its revenue in that unit was up 3.5% year-over-year thanks to higher average revenue per account.

In its earnings release it outright credited the bump to being “driven primarily by pricing actions implemented in recent quarters, the larger allocation of administrative and telco recovery fees from other revenue into wireless service revenue” as well as an increase in wireless broadband subscribers.

Verizon isn’t the only carrier raising rates on older plans, however. Earlier this week AT&T sent out messages to its users that it will be bumping up the price on its older Unlimited Elite plan next month.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be one of the biggest games of the year when it arrives in October. Sony plans to release a special PlayStation 5 and accessories in September to celebrate the occasion.

The Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5 bundle is a uniquely designed console and DualSense wireless controller based on the Venom symbiote featured in the game. Sony revealed the bundle last week along with a new trailer for the upcoming game. Preorders for the bundle, controller and console covers opened on Friday at select retailers.

The limited edition DualSense controller from the bundle can be purchased by itself for those who don’t need a new PS5.

Sony also has console covers with the same limited edition design for the standard and digital PS5.

The Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Limited Edition PS5 bundle, DualSense wireless controller and console covers will be shipped on Sept. 1.