Category: Technologies

The social network Bluesky has been around since November 2022, but until Tuesday, it was by invitation only. Wannabe users had to know a current Bluesky user who would pass along a numerical code before the new person could join. Now, anyone who’s interested can sign up to use the site, no code required.

“For the past year, we used invite codes to help us manage growth while we built features like moderation tooling, custom feeds, and more,” a blog post on the site reads. “Now, we’re ready for anyone to join.”

Bluesky is a social-media platform that shares many similarities with X, formerly Twitter. X underwent a number of changes after billionaire owner Elon Musk bought the site and retired legacy blue check marks showing verified accounts, reinstated previously banned accounts and started a new subscription program. Some former users are seeking an alternative, and according to The New York Times, users say Bluesky is the app that comes closest to mimicking X.

Bluesky says it already has more than 3 million users. A cartoon in the post shows an apocalyptic landscape depicting other social media platforms filled with bots and money scams, and goes on to show Bluesky as a peaceful landscape where users can discuss news, science and art, and share cat pictures.

Although the invite-only model has hampered Bluesky from reaching all interested parties, things could change now that it’s open to all. Here’s a look at what you need to know.

How do I sign up?

Now that the site is open to all, just go to the main page to create an account. You can download the Bluesky app for iOS or Android, or use Bluesky on your desktop.

It’ll ask for your email address and phone number (to send an authentication code) and tell you to choose a username and password. Then you’re in.

How is Bluesky similar to X and Threads?

I’ve been using Bluesky for about six months, and I can say that if you’re accustomed to X, Bluesky’s design and purpose should make sense to you.

The site uses vertically scrolling messages with small round photo avatars for users and icons under messages showing how many comments, likes and reposts they’ve received. It looks pretty similar to X’s format and Meta’s Threads.

Who’s behind it?

Here’s another Twitter/X connection. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is on the board of directors, and the Bluesky project began in 2019 when he was Twitter CEO. Jay Graber is the Bluesky CEO.

Even Bluesky’s name is related to X’s former name. Dorsey confirmed a Bluesky user’s speculation that the name ties in to Twitter’s bird mascot, the idea being the bird could fly even more freely in an open blue sky. Even though the name of the site doesn’t capitalize the S in “sky,” it’s pronounced “blue sky.” Don’t rhyme it with “brewski.”

The app is built on something called the authenticated transport protocol, or AT, a social media framework created by the company and made up of a network of many different sites.

And how is Bluesky different?

Domains as handles

For one thing, you can set your domain as your handle, if you wish. This could help with verification, which became a heated issue for Twitter once Musk began removing blue check marks from verified accounts that refused to pay a monthly fee.

“For example, a newsroom like NPR could set their handle to be @npr.org,” the Bluesky Social company blog notes. “Then, any journalists that NPR wants to verify could use subdomains to set their handles to be @name.npr.org. Brand accounts could set their handle to be their domain as well.”

Moderation

Moderation is also different. Another blog post says that Bluesky is already using automated moderating, and is working on a system of community labeling, which is described as “something similar to shared mute/block lists.”

Users of many social media platforms are shown posts from a feed selected for them by an algorithm, though you can influence that by following or blocking certain accounts. But Bluesky wants to give you a chance to pick from a variety of different algorithms to determine what you see.

You can mute accounts, which prevents you from seeing any notifications or top-level posts from them, or you can block accounts, which takes that a step further, meaning you and the other account both cannot see or interact with each other’s posts. And you can report posts or accounts for abuse.

Keeping connections

It’s possible that creators who acquire a following on Bluesky might one day be able to keep connections with those who follow them, even if the service itself changes.

Custom feeds

Algorithms are the rules that determine how content is filtered and recommended to users. Bluesky has something it calls custom feeds, which allows you to choose the algorithm that determines what you see.

“Imagine you want your timeline to only be posts from your mutuals, or only posts that have cat photos, or only posts related to sports — you can simply pick your feed of choice from an open marketplace,” a blog post on the site says. A longer post goes into more detail about custom feeds and algorithmic choice. Click the hashtag icon on the bottom of the app to add and discover new feeds.

Right now, developers can use the site’s feed generator starter kit to create a custom feed, and the site promises that eventually, the tools will be easy enough that the rest of us can build custom feeds.

Reviews

NBC News reporter Ben Collins tweeted that Bluesky “works and looks and feels just like (Twitter),” and praised the site’s “moderation, desktop experience and reliability.”

The site has a 3.5 out of 5 star rating on the Apple App Store. “Feels like early Twitter days, but more organic,” wrote one reviewer.

Who’s using it?

Here’s a small list of some of the people and groups you’ll see posting on Bluesky, though some post more than others.

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Author Neil Gaiman
• Author Colson Whitehead
• Author and Defector writer Drew Magary
• The X personality who goes by dril (real name: Paul Dochney)
• Singer Grimes (mother of two children with X owner and CEO Elon Musk)
• Former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning
• Humor site The Onion
• Actor LeVar Burton
• Comedian Andy Richter
• Actor and game-show host Drew Carey
• The New York Times
• Author William Gibson
• Star Trek star George Takei
• Monica Lewinsky
• Author Stephen King
• God

Sports fans looking to simplify their streaming options in a world that is moving away from cable will have a new option later this year. On Tuesday afternoon, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced that they would be creating a joint venture to “develop, launch and operate a streaming sports bundle of linear networks” and some direct-to-consumer “sports content and services” in the US.

The new service, which will be equally owned by each of the three companies, will be pulling sports content from each of their respective networks. This includes Disney’s stable of ABC and ESPN channels (including ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU), Fox’s offerings (Fox, FS1, FS2) as well as Warner Bros. Discovery’s (TNT, TBS, TruTV).

College conference networks like the ACC Network, Big Ten Network and SEC Network are included, as is ESPN Plus.

Read more: How to Watch Super Bowl 2024 Without Cable

There’s no name or pricing for the new service, though it’s “scheduled to launch in the fall of 2024” and would be available in a new app. A bundle with “Disney Plus, Hulu and/or Max” is also mentioned in the press release announcing the news, though details on what such a bundle would look like are similarly not yet known.

Also missing from this new venture are Comcast’s NBC and Paramount’s CBS, which air major sporting events including NFL games, college sports and the Olympics.

As cord-cutting of traditional cable and satellite TV packages has accelerated, being able to watch live sports has become increasingly complex particularly as games get pushed to different channels, apps and streaming services.

Last year, a Yankees fan living in New York, for example, needed to subscribe to a variety of services to be able to catch all their games: the YES Network (for the bulk of local games), Apple TV Plus (for Friday Night Baseball), Peacock (for Sunday exclusive games), Amazon’s Prime Video (for some exclusive games) as well as still keeping a cable package that gets ESPN (for Sunday Night Baseball), TBS, Fox and FS1.

While this new joint venture won’t remove all of the complications of a modern sports fan, games that air on any of these major networks will be available on this platform. This includes NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB contests as well as several other sports including UFC, WNBA, NASCAR, PGA Tour Golf, Grand Slam Tennis, the FIFA World Cup and college sports.

If you have an LG Smart TV, you may be eligible for a free three-month trial of Apple TV Plus, in a new deal announced by LG Tuesday. The limited free trial starts today and will run until April 30, and is available on select LG models.

After Apple hiked the price of Apple TV Plus and its other subscription services in late 2023, the streaming service now costs $10 per month — meaning this deal will save you $30.

LG Smart TVs with 4K and 8K resolution, made in 2018 and later, are eligible for the deal, along with the lifestyle screen models StanbyME and StanbyME Go. The deal is valid in 93 countries, including the US, UK and Canada.

To take advantage of the discount, simply open the Apple TV Plus app on your LG TV and follow the instructions. If you’re not sure what model you have or if your TV qualifies, you can easily check by opening the Apple TV Plus app to see if you’re prompted to sign up for the limited-time offer.

Apple TV Plus is home to a fairly robust catalog of movies and shows. Award-winning movies like Killers of the Flower Moon and CODA are joined by series including Ted Lasso, Masters of the Air, Silo and The Morning Show.

For more, check out all the latest deals on TVs (including LG) and the best streaming services for 4K content.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, a CNET Editors’ Choice award pick, offers hundreds of games that you can play on your Xbox Series X or Series S, Xbox One and PC for $17 a month. With a subscription, you get new games every month — like the gaming world’s latest obsession, Palworld — and other benefits, like online multiplayer and deals on non-Game Pass titles.

Last month, Game Pass Ultimate added the instant phenomenon Palworld, which already has 7 million players, and it continues to add new titles. Here are the games coming to the service soon.

Train Sim World 4

Available: Feb. 7

If you’re a fan of model trains, but don’t have the space in your home for the tracks — or a means to finance the hobby — you should give Train Sim World 4 a try. In this game, you can learn how to operate a train and take it across countries like Australia, Germany and the US. You can run different scenarios where you can change things like the weather en route for an added challenge, or you can go into Free Roam and ride the rails however you want.

Madden NFL 24

Available: Feb. 8

Madden NFL 24 is joining Game Pass Ultimate just in time for Super Bowl Sunday. The latest installment in the football franchise introduces some new gameplay mechanics, like an upgraded passing system that adds jump and dive passes to your arsenal. Your in-game playbook has also been expanded, putting more than 70 new formations and at least 500 new plays at your disposal. So if you’re not a fan of the Chiefs or the 49ers, play some Madden instead this Sunday.

Resident Evil 3

Available: Feb. 13

About a month after Game Pass Ultimate added the award-winning RE2 remake to its library, subscribers will be able to play the next Resident Evil remake as well. RE3 puts you back in the shoes of Jill Valentine as she attempts to escape from the zombie outbreak that’s taken over Raccoon City. You’ll have to solve puzzles and figure out the best routes of escape in this survival horror game, all while being stalked by the walking weapon Nemesis.

A Little to the Left

Available: Feb. 14

This cozy puzzle game will have you stacking documents, sorting postcards and cleaning areas.

“A Little to the Left is all about tidying messes into pleasing arrangements, without worrying about timers or fail-states,” Anne Macmillan, co-founder of developer Max Inferno, told Xbox.com. “It’s peaceful and accessible, with simple controls that anyone can quickly understand.”

Just as you think you’ve solved these puzzles, though, a playful cat may come along and mess up your progress. But so it goes. You’re not racing against a clock, so solve the puzzle again and hope the cat minds its own business.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Available: Feb. 14

This game makes its return to Game Pass Ultimate almost three years after it was removed from the service. This Metroidvania-style game was developed by Koji Igarashi, a former Castlevania series producer, and it feels like another installment in that series. You’ll explore a castle, solve puzzles and use magic and physical weapons to rid the land of monsters and demons.

PlateUp!

Available: Feb. 15

Have you thought about starting your own restaurant, or just caught up on The Bear and want more chaos? If so, you should give this a try. PlateUp! is a cooking action game that lets you experience the ups and downs of the restaurant business without any of the financial risk. You design your restaurant and kitchen, cook up dishes and plan out who’s working which shift so your new place thrives.

Return to Grace

Available: Feb. 20

This narrative adventure game puts you in the boots of a space archaeologist who’s just discovered the resting place of an AI god named Grace. Your goal now is to befriend Grace’s fractured variants and discover why the AI was shut down in the first place.

Titles leaving Game Pass

While you’ll be able to play the above games on Game Pass Ultimate in the coming weeks, there are a few titles that are leaving the service on Feb. 15. You have some time to finish any side-quests, but once these titles are gone you’ll have to buy them separately.

• Opus: Echo of Starsong
• Galactic Civilizations 3

For more on Xbox, here are more titles available on Game Pass Ultimate now and what to know about the gaming service.

I am watching a 3D video of my family at Thanksgiving, a clip I’ve watched many times since Apple’s Vision Pro entered my life. Shot with an iPhone 15 Pro, my mom is there, looking at me across the table, my son and nephew nearby, and my sister getting food ready. It almost feels like I’m there. And then, I looked at my favorite dioramas as prehistoric life at the Museum of Natural History, looking at them like I was standing near the tank and peering in. But this time I’m not in the Vision Pro: I’m wearing the Meta Quest 3.

While some have already found ways to view Apple’s 3D spatial videos in Meta’s VR headsets, Meta officially added a way to see them with the Quest’s next v62 OS update. I’ve gotten a chance to try an early build of the OS on the Quest 3 and look at my spatial videos shot with the iPhone 15 Pro, and it works. It’s not perfect, but for the $500 cost of a Quest 3 versus the $3,500 for a Vision Pro, it’s a pretty great alternative.

Spatial videos will also play on the Quest 2 (which costs just $250 now) or the Quest Pro, but I wanted to see what Meta’s highest-res VR headset of the moment would feel like against Apple’s bleeding-edge micro-OLED 4K screens.

Spatial videos already feel a bit low-res and fuzzy-bordered when seen on Vision Pro; the video recording limit is currently 1080p at 30fps. In a 4K headset, that means captured moments already seem a bit less crystal-clear than in real life and contained in a limited border. Meta’s Quest 3 plays back videos in a similar type of slightly fuzzy frame but less aggressively blurred at the edges than Apple’s zoomed-in playback mode. I couldn’t grab any screenshots, unfortunately, because Meta’s screenshot mode blacks out the video content (Apple’s doesn’t).

In the Quest 3, videos had a bit of stutter sometimes, which keeps them from looking 100% smooth. That could be an early build bug, but it’s unclear. Still, memory snippets play well enough that I’d feel fine sharing them with family and friends or using it myself. It’s also significantly easier to share the Quest with family: it works over glasses (unlike the Vision Pro) and doesn’t need eye tracking setups as the Vision Pro does.

Videos are uploaded via the iPhone Meta app, loading them to Meta’s Gallery just like any other photo or video. Once there, they can be seen inside the Quest in the Files app, in a Spatial Video folder.

Meta also added a few test spatial videos to look at in case you have none for yourself to upload: Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth and his family at the beach fishing for mussels and a clip of a cute dog, plus a few more.

It’s pretty surprising to see Meta openly welcoming Apple’s own iPhone-shot videos so quickly, but it’s also a smart move. Meta could also be working on its own way to record spatial videos sooner rather than later. For instance, while the Meta Ray-Ban glasses don’t record 3D video yet, Bosworth told me last year that the original Ray-Ban glasses were designed to do exactly that. Meta abandoned the 3D video plan for its glasses before launch but could re-introduce the feature on a new version of the Ray-Ban glasses based on the way Apple has re-popularized the idea.

At the moment, you need an iPhone 15 Pro to record 3D spatial video. But if you have one — and you already have a Quest in your home — this is one more reason why you could skip the expense of a Vision Pro for now and get a taste of immersive futures with a headset you may already have.

Whether you’re in need of a new pair of wireless earbuds to pair with your iPhone or you want to upgrade to the best AirPods to use with Apple’s Vision Pro headset, you can’t go wrong with the latest AirPods Pro 2. Not only are they the only earbuds that offer lossless audio support when using Apple’s brand-new mixed reality headset, but right now you can pick a pair up for a low price, too.

Amazon will now sell you a pair of USB-C AirPods Pro 2 earbuds for just $190, a price that saves you $60 without any of those pesky discount codes or on-screen coupons. But the price of these earbuds tends to fluctuate wildly, so make sure to take advantage of this deal now if new AirPods are on your radar.

The AirPods Pro 2 offer some of the best noise-canceling capabilities you’ll find on a pair of earbuds and they have a built-in transparency mode for when you need to be more aware of your surroundings. Plus, they’ll automatically optimize their volume based on your environment. If you use them with an iPhone you’ll get access to exclusive features including personalized spatial audio and hands-free Siri access. And the AirPods Pro 2 boast Qi wireless charging and promise an impressive battery life of up to 30 hours on a single charge (with the charging case). They also instantly pair and switch between Apple devices, making these wireless earbuds a joy to use.

For the Vision Pro specifically, the USB-C AirPods Pro 2 offer support for 20-bit/48 kHz Lossless Audio with “ultralow latency.” Exactly how that will affect your experience remains to be seen, but these are certainly the earbuds to have on hand if you plan on being an early Vision Pro adopter.

Not into Apple’s buds or looking for headphones instead? There are tons of headphone and earbud deals available right now.

With so many great wireless earbudsto pick from, you’d expect a lot more options for those who want to work out while wearing them. Bone-conducting headphones won’t fall out of your ears and they won’t block out the sound of dangerous traffic around you. This pair from Shockz is pretty solid: The brand has made several appearances on our list of best running headphones, so you know that you’re buying something with a good pedigree.

Right now, you can get your hands — and ears — on a pair of Shokz OpenMove bone conduction headphones for just $55, a price that is a full 31% off the original asking price and a match for the lowest we’ve seen these go. There are two different colors for you to choose from at Woot: blue and pink. The discount is due to end in seven days or when supplies run dry.

These earbuds are comfortable and lightweight while offering strong battery life and USB-C charging. You can listen to music and make calls for up to 6 hours without needing any top-ups, and the bone-conduction tech means that you’ll still be able to hear your surroundings — perfect for running or walking around a busy city.

Other noteworthy features include support for Bluetooth 5.1 and an IP55 rating, ensuring that you can wear these things in the rain and while working out, although they’re not designed for swimming or wearing in the shower.

Prefer your earbuds to be the old-fashioned kind? Don’t worry, there are plenty of regular earbud and headphone deals to be had right now.