Back in February, Elon Musk promised he would start paying creators a share of Twitter’s ad revenue, and more recently, the billionaire said the initial chunk of payouts would amount to $5 million total. The Krassensteins’ posts were among several enthusiastic posts from a select group of Twitter users who say they’ve started getting tens of thousands of dollars in payouts from the app on Thursday, seemingly based on the number of impressions — or views — they’re getting on replies to their tweets. The first batch of payments aren’t just for one month, but a backlog of the past five and a half months since Musk first promised he’d share a percentage of ad revenue with creators.

Here’s how it works: Twitter shares an undisclosed percentage of the ad revenue it gets from replies to people’s tweets, directly to the user. So the more people reply to a user’s tweets and ads in those replies get viewed, the more money you’ll get. For now, the only users getting paid are ones who meet specific criteria. They must be a verified user — meaning, they pay for a blue checkmark or have been gifted one — have 5 million impressions, or views, on posts in each of the last three months, and have a Stripe account linked to their Twitter account.

All this means most users won’t be getting paid, and even those who do may not be getting paid as much in the future. Some form of ad revenue-sharing has become relatively standard for social media platforms. YouTube, for example, pays its creator partners 55 percent of ad revenue for regular videos and 45 percent for YouTube shorts.

But $5 million in a batch of ad payouts, and millions more if it continues, is a significant amount of money to spend, especially considering Twitter has allegedly been failing to pay some of its office expenses and bills. As of last month, the company was facing eviction in its Boulder, Colorado, office for not paying rent.

So why is Twitter spending money on this new creator revenue program?

Because it needs the loyalty of creators, who attract eyeballs and advertising dollars to the platform. And these days, especially with the viral launch of Instagram Threads last week, creators have a lot of options about where to go.

“They’re competing with the likes of big companies with very deep pockets,” said social media consultant Matt Navarra. That means Twitter wants to keep creators on its platform, especially as Threads becomes more popular. The Meta-owned Twitter-killer app amassed a record breaking 100 million users within a week of launching, making it one of the fastest growing apps ever. In Navarra’s words, Twitter has “no choice to create such a program.”

But since it financially rewards creators who have more replies, Twitter’s new program could incentivize its creators to post controversial tweets that spark heated conversation. One user pointed this out, tweeting, “The more haters you have in your replies the more money you’ll make on Twitter.” To which Musk replied, “Poetic justice.”

At the same time that Twitter’s trying to incentivize creators to use the platform, it’s also trying to convince major brands to keep spending money advertising on the platform. And incentivizing Twitter users to rile up angry, reply-guy tweets even more than they already might make Twitter an even more volatile place, and one that advertisers may be less likely to want to associate with.

“I’m not sure how good that is in terms of making the platform a happier, safer, lovely place to be around,” Navarra told Vox.

Advertisers cut back on spending on Twitter by 59 percent year over year in the first week of April, according to an internal document seen by the New York Times. This was reportedly because of what they see as a risk of harming their brand reputation if their ads appear next to controversial content.

So far, many of the creators who have said they’ve benefited from Twitter’s new ad revenue share program are independent journalists and political pundits. Aside from the Krassenstein brothers, other names include right-leaning conservative commentator Benny Johnson and podcaster Tim Pool.

For a long time, journalists essentially gave their content to Twitter for free, in exchange for attention on their articles and access to real-time information. Now, with many journalists tweeting less, these payouts seem aimed at hanging on to the journalists who remain, or the new creators who are emerging.

“Next generation of journalists should be able to make a living doing it on Twitter. After many years, great to see it becoming possible…” Twitter product VP Keith Coleman said in a tweet on Thursday.

Maybe Twitter will successfully create a new class of journalists through this program. But they’ll likely be a very different set of journalists than the ones who came up on the pre-Elon Twitter. And for the new generation of journalist creators, there’s some cash to be made on Twitter, at least for now. Whether Twitter will have the cash to keep paying these creators tens of thousands of dollars in payouts every few months — or even more often — has yet to be seen.

At a time when other leading AI companies like Google and OpenAI are closely guarding their secret sauce, Meta decided to give away, for free, the code that powers its innovative new AI large language model, Llama 2. That means other companies can now use Meta’s Llama 2 model, which some technologists say is comparable to ChatGPT in its capabilities, to build their own customized chatbots.

Llama 2 could challenge the dominance of ChatGPT, which broke records for being one of the fastest-growing apps of all time. But more importantly, its open source nature adds new urgency to an important ethical debate over who should control AI — and whether it can be made safe.

As AI becomes more advanced and potentially more dangerous, is it better for society if the code is under wraps — limited to the staff of a small number of companies — or should it be shared with the public so that a wider group of people can have a hand in shaping the transformative technology?

Top tech companies are taking different approaches

In Meta’s Llama 2 announcement, Mark Zuckerberg posted an Instagram of himself smiling with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, announcing the two companies’ partnership on the release. Zuckerberg also made the case for why it’s better for leading AI models to be “open source,” which means making the technology’s underlying code largely available for anyone to use.

“Open source drives innovation because it enables many more developers to build with new technology,” wrote Zuckerberg wrote in a separate Facebook post. “It also improves safety and security because when software is open, more people can scrutinize it to identify and fix potential issues.”

The move is being welcomed by many AI developers, researchers, and academics who say this will give them unprecedented access to build new tools or study systems that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to create. Cutting-edge large language models like the ones that power ChatGPT can cost tens of millions of dollars to create and maintain.

“I’m just bracing myself for what kind of progress can happen,” said Nazneen Rajani, research lead at open source AI platform Hugging Face, which collaborated with Meta on the release. Rajani wrote a post on Twitter assessing Llama 2’s capabilities when it first came out and told Vox, “We will be able to uncover more secret ingredients about what it actually takes to build a model like GPT-4.”

But open-sourcing AI comes with major risks. Some of the biggest players in the field, including Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google, have been limiting how much of their AI systems are public because of what they cite as the grave dangers of these technologies.

Some technologists are increasingly worried about hypothetical doomsday scenarios in which an AI could outsmart human beings to inflict harm like releasing a biological super weapon or causing other havoc in ways we can’t fully imagine. OpenAI’s co-founder, Ilya Sutskever, told The Verge in February that his company was “flat-out wrong” when it shared details about its models more openly in the past because if AI becomes as intelligent as humans one day, reaching what some call AGI or artificial general intelligence, it would be unwise to share that with the masses.

“If you believe, as we do, that at some point, AI — AGI — is going to be extremely, unbelievably potent, then it just does not make sense to open-source. It is a bad idea,” Sutskever said at the time.

While we may be far off from AIs that are capable of causing real human destruction, we have already seen AI tools from the open source community be misused in other ways. For example, soon after Meta released its first Llama model strictly for research use in February, it leaked on the anything-goes online message board 4Chan, where it was then used to create chatbots that spewed hateful content like racial slurs and, in some cases, scenes of graphic violence.

“We take these concerns seriously and have put a number of things in place to support a responsible approach to building with Llama 2,” wrote Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, in an email to Vox. Those measures include “red-teaming,” or pressure-testing the model before its release by feeding it prompts expected to generate a “risky output,” such as ones about criminal conduct and hateful content, Al-Dahle said. Meta also fine-tuned its model to mitigate against this kind of behavior and put out new guidelines barring certain illegal and harmful uses.

Meta says it will continue to fine-tune its model for safety after its release.

“When technology is released and refined in the open, we believe it ultimately leads to more transparent discussions, increased responsiveness to addressing threats, and increased iteration in building more responsible AI tools and technologies,” Al-Dahle said.

Some experts point out, for example, that we had the problem of misinformation even before AI existed in its current form. What matters more at this point, they say, is how that misinformation is distributed. Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan told Vox that “the bottleneck for bad actors isn’t generating misinformation — it’s distributing it and persuading people.” He added, “AI, whether open source or not, hasn’t made those steps any easier.”

To try to contain the spread of misinformation, companies creating AI models can put some restrictions on how their programs can be used. Meta, for example, has some rules barring users from using Llama 2 to promote violence or harassment, but those rules will likely prove difficult to enforce.

It’s also worth noting that Llama 2 also isn’t fully open. Meta didn’t release the training data used to teach the latest model, which is a key component of any AI system; researchers say it’s crucial to measuring bias in AI systems. Lastly, Meta requires companies with over 700 million monthly users — so basically, only a handful of fellow tech giants like Google — to ask Meta’s permission before using the software.

Still, overall, Llama 2 is the most open sourced AI project we’ve seen recently from a major tech company. Which brings up the question of how other companies will respond.

So what exactly is the case for and against a more open sourced AI world? And what direction do we seem to be moving toward, especially given Meta’s recent announcement?

Open source can lead to more innovation

If you’re a casual user of AI tools like ChatGPT, you may not see the immediate benefits of open-sourcing AI models. But if you’re an AI developer or researcher, the introduction of open source LLMs like Llama 2 opens up a world of possibilities.

“It’s a huge deal,” said Anton Troynikov, a co-founder and head of technology of AI startup Chroma which builds databases that developers plug into AI systems to customize it with their data, facts, and tools.

For someone like Troynikov, using Llama 2 could allow the company to give its users more control over how its data is used.

“Now you don’t have to send any data outside of your system, you can run it 100 percent internally on your own machines,” said Troynikov, who gave the example of doctors who don’t need to expose patients’ medical records out to a third party. “Your data no longer has to go anywhere to get these fantastic capabilities.”

Troynikov said he’s personally just started using Llama 2 and is still testing how well it works with his company’s technology.

It’s too early to see exactly how else Llama 2 will be used, but Meta’s Al-Dahle said it sees a “range of possibilities in the creation of chat-based agents and assistants that help improve productivity, customer service, and efficiency for businesses that may not have been able to access and deploy this technology otherwise.”

There’s also a self-interest here for improving Meta’s own products. If Meta puts its AI models into the wild, the open source community of outside engineers will improve its models, which Meta can then use to build the in-app AI tools that the company has said it’s working on, like business assistant chatbots.

This way, Meta doesn’t have to put all of its resources into catching up to OpenAI and Google, which are further along in putting generative AI tools in their main product line.

Open-sourcing AI will tap into the “intelligence of the masses”

Some leading experts think that if AI models are open sourced, they could become smarter and less ethically flawed overall.

By open-sourcing AI models, more people can build on them and improve them. The open source AI company Stability AI has already created a model called “FreeWilly” that builds on top of Llama 2. It quickly became popular and can now outperform its genesis, Llama 2, in some tests. That has led it to rise to the top of Hugging Face’s leaderboard open source AI models.

“People outside Meta are beating Meta at its own performance and its own models that they carefully collected and curated over the years. They were able to do it in a week,” said Rajani. “It’s very hard to beat the intelligence of the masses”

Meanwhile, the AI community has a strong history of open-sourcing knowledge. Google built and publicly shared the transformer model, which is a neural network that understands context, like language, by tracking relationships in between parts of data, like the words in a sentence. The model has become foundational in cutting-edge AI models, and is used in many applications including in ChatGPT (the “T” in GPT stands for transformer).

Open source models allow researchers to better study the capabilities and risks of AI and to stop the concentration of power in the hands of a few companies, Princeton professor Arvind Narayanan said, pointing out the risk of a technological “monoculture” forming.

“Monoculture can have catastrophic consequences,” he said. “When the same model, say GPT-4, is used in thousands or millions of apps, any security vulnerability in that model, such as a jailbreak, can affect all those apps.”

Historically, experts point out, AI has blossomed as a field because company researchers, academics, and other experts have been willing to share notes.

“One of the reasons why data science and AI is a massive industry is actually because it’s built on a culture of knowledge sharing” said Rumman Chowdhury, co-founder of Humane Intelligence, a nonprofit developing accountable AI systems. “I think it’s really hard for people who aren’t in the data science community to realize how much we just give to each other.”

Moreover, some AI academics say that open source models allow researchers to better find not just security flaws, but more qualitative flaws in large language models, which have been proven to perpetuate bias, hallucinations, or other problematic content.

While companies can test for some of these biases beforehand, it’s difficult to anticipate every negative outcome until these models are out in the wild, some researchers argue.

“I think there needs to be a lot more research done about to what point vulnerabilities can be exploited. There needs to be auditing and risk analysis and having a risk paper … all of these can only be done if you have a model that is open and can be studied,” said Rajani.

But open source AI could also go terribly wrong

Even the most ardent supporters of open AI models acknowledge there are major risks. And exactly how AI could go wrong runs the spectrum from more easily faking people’s identities to wiping out humanity, at least in theory. The most pressing argument in this scenario is that if AI does reach some kind of artificial general intelligence, it could then one day outsmart humans in ways we won’t be able to control.

In a recent senate hearing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Congress that with “all of the dangers of AI, the fewer of us that you really have to keep a careful eye on — on the absolute, bleeding edge capabilities,” the easier it is for regulators to control.

On the other hand, even Altman acknowledged the importance of allowing the open source community to grow. He suggested setting some kind of limit so that when a model meets certain “capability thresholds” for performing specific tasks, it should be forced to get a license from the government.

That’s one on which some proponents of open source seem to agree with Altman. If we reach the point when AI models get close to overtaking humanity, then maybe we can pump the brakes on open source.

But the challenging question with AI is at what point do we decide that it’s too powerful to leave unfettered? And if the genie is out of the bottle at that point, will it be impossible to stop the progress of AI? Those questions are impossible to answer with certainty right now. But in the meantime, open source AI is here, and while there are real immediate risks, as well as ones that could snowball down the road, there are also clear benefits for all of us in having a wider group of people thinking about it.

But as you might imagine, there’s a lot of these tools out there, which can make it a bit overwhelming at times. And, as a result, there’s a lot of stuff that can be missed. This is why every year I try to take a look at what’s new out there and share some of the best products and services for creators that I’ve used.

This past year, when it came to hardware, it seemed like the standard bearers for audio and video creation became pretty clear. But with software, that’s where things continue to get interesting. There are entirely new apps that put something completely unique out into the market, while other apps put interesting twists on existing services.

Let’s run down some of the most interesting ones now.

Video and livestreaming

If you’re streaming live video on a Mac, Ecamm Live has quickly become the leading streaming service for creators. I’ve recommended it before as the most intuitive live broadcasting software for Mac because it’s not complicated like most other broadcasting software is. But the new Ecamm Live, which is currently in public beta, is honestly like a brand-new app.

Users can now multistream to numerous different platforms like Twitch, YouTube, and more at once. There are separate services that do just this, like Restream, and I still suggest that those without very fast internet service use those platforms. But Ecamm Live builds this right into its streaming software, which is great if your ISP plan can handle it. The new Ecamm Live also provides isolated recording of your camera and audio inputs, so you can edit a completely different-looking video with the same content afterwards. Or, even just repurpose what you recorded as a podcast.

Speaking of repurposing content, that’s a big trend among creators nowadays. If you’re conducting an hours-long livestream on Twitch, why not grab the audio and upload it as a podcast, too? While you’re at it, you should also cut that longform content into shorter pieces to upload on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. And there are apps that will help you do just that. Repurpose.io and chopcast both provide users with the ability to quickly chop up content, resize video for specific platforms like TikTok or Instagram Reels, and add overlays made for social media-friendly video. Timebolt is an app I’ve recommended before which scans for lulls in the video and automatically cuts out the silence, making it perfect for users who want to turn their live video into more concise podcast episodes.

If you’re looking for hardware recommendations, the Shure MV7 remains the best USB option for microphones. Its quality is close to that of its more professional older brother, the Shure SM7B, which has become the standard for professional audio recording. If you do have XLR microphones you want to use over USB, I suggest the Rodecaster Pro from Rode over any cheaper options. The ability to have a fully functional soundboard, which can also act as a standalone recording device, could be immensely helpful for your creator workflow.

As for cameras, just grab the Elgato Cam Link which will turn nearly any DSLR or mirrorless camera into a webcam that will output better quality video than any “real” webcam on the market. Elgato also still provides the best lighting solution for streamers with its Key Lights, which can be turned on and off, and adjusted via a mobile app.

When it comes to the best computer for creators, I’d still recommend the Mac Mini M1 as the most powerful at the most affordable price. However, if you’re a creator that can splurge and spend a bit more, the 14″ Macbook Pro with the M1 Pro chip is the one to check out. The M1 Pro performance is 60 percent higher than even the M1. It even performs better than the newer model of Macbooks with the M2 chip.

Social media content

When you think of social media apps, you probably first think of services that help users post to multiple different platforms. But I much prefer using social media tools that help facilitate research for content ideas and track conversations around trending topics.

Reddit is a huge resource for content creators who are looking for, well, pretty much anything to talk about. GummySearch is a Reddit tool that allows users to track trending posts and relevant conversations on the platform. It’s sort of like Google Alerts but for Reddit. Another great place to find topics to create content about is on Twitter. The iOS app, Bird Search, helps you do deep searches of the platform and find content based on specific attributes like top tweets of the day or tweets with the most likes containing a particular search term.

When it comes to content creation for social media, Xnapper is a super-easy tool that gives you complete control over the design of your screenshots. If you find yourself often taking screenshots of tweets to post on other platforms like Instagram, for example, Xnapper will help you throw a background on it, provide a border or round edges, and then automatically resize it to fit the formatting you need.

If you find yourself consistently sharing the same content on social media, check out ZoZo App. It’s an iOS app that adds keyboard shortcuts to your iPhone and iPad keyboard. You can turn anything, like a link, a photo, or a text template into a one-click button on your smartphone. Just load up all of your social media links, for example, and easily post them with a single tap of your phone.

One piece of hardware I discovered this year is Pivo, a motion-tracking smartphone camera mount. Basically, if you’re shooting video by yourself and are sick of having to constantly limit what you do due to a stagnant tripod, you can use Pivo to automatically follow you as you move around the room for your TikTok videos. I was pleasantly surprised at how accurate it was at locking onto an individual and following them around the room. And after reviewing the videos that were shot, the motion tracking is actually very smooth and looked quite professional.

Writing tools

AI writing tools are the next big thing, if they aren’t already the big thing. Some of what’s being created out there via AI is very impressive. However there are many real concerns around their usage, but that’s for another piece. It’s important to remember in the context of using AI tools that they are just that: tools. These apps should be used to help break writer’s block or to help think of a new creative direction to take a story in. Don’t use them for a final output.

With that said, one AI writer I came across that stood out to me was Katteb. Why? It’s the only AI writer I’ve seen, at least on the consumer level, that provides fact checking. If you’re a YouTuber or podcaster who needs some line suggestions for a script, Katteb’s fact-checked outputs seem like a good place to start. In my testing, the outputs were all factually accurate, which was impressive as my experience with AI writers found that they often make inaccurate claims.

For longer form website content, Wordplay is an option to check out. Wordplay seems to focus on search engine optimization targeting. This is good for creators who can then go into the AI output and make edits in their own voice without having to worry about banal SEO keyword targeting because it should already be there via Wordplay.

For writing tools that can be embedded right into ordinary workflows, check out services like Grammarly or Linguix. Each provides writing assistance features like grammar checks, sentence rewrite options, and more valuable tools for those planning scripts or writing blog posts.

And finally, a good copy-and-paste tool should be on every creators list. I am constantly copying and pasting links to Twitch streams, YouTube clips, and podcast episodes. It helps to be able to have those links, which can sometimes be long and cumbersome, save across my devices. Enter PastePal, a cross platform Mac and iOS app that retains your entire copy and paste history, and allows you to access them on your desktop and mobile device. It’s incredibly helpful to not have to go back and forth between apps to copy links to share on social media.

Planning things out

Last but not least, we get to the productivity apps. This is where it gets really hard because this particular category of apps is overloaded with interesting web apps. It’s just impossible to use them all, so you really have to decide what’s best for you.

Everything starts with a topic and a story, right? So creators really should utilize RSS reader apps, if they don’t already, so they can easily follow the latest at all their favorite websites. There’s a whole bunch out there with Feedly as probably the leading contender in the market. But old-school RSS heads will always long for that now-defunct former leader in the space, Google Reader. Earlier this year, I started using BazQux Reader and it’s probably the closest I’ve seen an application come to emulating the feel of Google Reader.

After finding links and sources, creators have to get everything organized, too. And that’s where a good bookmarking tool comes in. Just like trying to find the perfect RSS feed reader, seeking out the perfect tool to manage your bookmarks is also quite the challenge. It really just comes down to your personal preference. Raindrop.io has long been a standout. But this year I came across a few new options that are worth checking out. Marqly and Guardo are two new bookmark managers. They both have similar pinboard-type layouts to easily find links, but each has unique features, too. For example, Marqly allows you to highlight and save text within the link you bookmark, so specific portions of the website can be referenced easily. A standout feature from Guardo is the ability to make a bookmark list public so you can share links with collaborators.

Other good bookmarking options I came across include Marklog and Anybox. I use Twitter’s built-in bookmarks feature to save a lot of tweets I may want to refer back to, so I found Marklog‘s ability to connect to your Twitter account and automatically pull in and organize the bookmarks to be very helpful. Anybox is the pick for users who prefer to manage their bookmarks via desktop apps, which can be synced to their mobile device apps via the cloud.

And for saving web browser tabs, I recommend Toby for a cloud-based option and Session Buddy if you just want to save things locally.

Once you’re creating content, a to-do list for your tasks is a must-have so you don’t get overwhelmed. For specific to-do lists for creative projects, I’ve started using Lunatask, which provides more options to track what needs to be done. You can easily prioritize tasks, push other tasks back, and track their status. It helps with staying up-to-date with publishing content of podcast episode release dates. There’s a built-in journaling option, too, but if you want a full-fledged notes app, I’ve previously recommended Upnote for jotting ideas down. For people who want a different type of notes app, I’ve suggested Walling, which allows you to visually plan out ideas and create a sort of a pinboard of text, links, and media.

There you have it, creators. A slew of online services, mobile apps, and even some hardware suggestions to check out. Any and all of these recommendations should help with your content creation endeavors in 2023 and beyond.

According to Elon Musk, the re-launch of the feature should happen on Nov. 29, “to make sure that it is rock solid.”

Punting relaunch of Blue Verified to November 29th to make sure that it is rock solid

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022

Twitter’s blue checkmarks used to prove a person or an organization’s identity. Then, when Elon Musk took over Twitter, the checkmarks were made available for $8 a month via a subscription to Twitter’s paid tier, Twitter Blue. This immediately caused absolute mayhem on Twitter, with numerous accounts impersonating other accounts and sharing fake news. The secondary, gray checkmark, that actually does prove one’s identity but there’s no precise criteria on who can get it, went on, then off, then on again.

Then, to make things even more complicated, Twitter Blue subscription disappeared, taking some (but not all) blue checkmarks with it. Now, finally, we know what happened: Twitter took the feature down to think things through.

The entire saga is a consequence of Musk’s insistence to launch or change features quickly and see what sticks. As he himself tweeted, “Twitter will do lots of dumb things in coming months.”

Another recent issue that remains unsolved is two-factor authentication on Twitter, which hasn’t been working properly lately.

Some of the issues might be related to mass layoffs on Twitter. Following Musk’s acquisition, the company fired roughly half of its full-time employees and, reportedly, a large number of its contract employees. The layoffs themselves were chaotic, with Musk firing people who criticized him publicly, and Twitter reportedly asking some ex-workers to come back.

Welcoming back Ligma & Johnson! pic.twitter.com/LEhXV95Njj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2022

(https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1592618665933156352opens in a new tab)

As for legacy blue checkmarks – the ones Twitter gave away as a means of verification before you could buy them for $8 – they’re definitely going away. In a tweet, Musk said that “all unpaid legacy Blue checkmarks will be removed in a few months.”

According to Snowman, Lucky Luna is a coming-of-age story inspired by The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a Japanese folktale. Luna wakes up alone on a mysterious island and embarks on a magical quest through hidden temples and dungeons.

The game’s pixelated style feels different from other Snowman games like Where Cards Fall, the Alto series and Skate City, but producer Andrew Schimmel says he thinks players will recognize the studio’s thumbprint.

Check out Lucky Luna’s trailer here:

The new game was announced earlier this summer during Netflix’s Geeked Week, a five-day virtual event centered around the streaming service’s films, shows and games. In addition to Lucky Luna, Netflix announced a Queen’s Gambit chess game, as well as other games spun off from Shadow & Bone, Nailed It and more.

Netflix began expanding into gaming last year and has since added titles like Stranger Things 3: The Game, Exploding Kittens, Bowling Ballers and more. You’ll find them in the Games section within the Netflix app, which takes you to your device’s app store to download each game. The streaming giant has also acquired studios like Boss Fight Entertainment, Next Games and Night School.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said at Vox Media’s Code Conference that he doesn’t “hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy on that at this point,” and if you want seamless messaging with your family, you should “buy your mom an iPhone.”

While RCS-powered texting is currently only available on Android phones, Google reported in May that there are now half a billion people actively using the standard in its Messages app. Google’s Messages app is now the default texting app for most Android phones, and the RCS standard allows for features that are similar to Apple’s iMessage without requiring a specific type of phone or setting up a third-party texting app. These include typing indicators, encryption and higher-quality photo and video sharing.

RCS now has the support of the three major US carriers with Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T committing to make Google’s Messages app the default on Android phones sold by the carriers. But despite Google’s campaign, the chances of Apple supporting RCS appear bleak. In the meantime, Google has improved its Messages app to correctly display reaction icons sent by Apple’s phones instead of showing a text describing who “Liked” your message. The iOS 16 Developer Beta appears to be supporting a similar translation for reactions sent over SMS.

Let’s take a closer look at how to start using Google’s Chat features, and some of the more nuanced aspects of Chat.

How to get started with Google’s Chat feature

First, you’ll need an Android phone with Google’s Messages app installed and set as the default text-messaging app. The first time you launch Messages, it will ask if you want to set it as your default app. Just follow the prompts and don’t worry, you won’t lose your conversation history by switching.

After setting Messages as your default messaging app, take a couple of minutes and set up Messages for Web, which allows you to send and receive text messages from your computer.

The service is globally available, so it shouldn’t matter which carrier you use or what country you live in, as long as you have the Messages app installed and are using it, you’ll have access to Chat.

Turn Google’s Chat features on

After installing Google’s Messages app and setting it as your default texting app, there are two different ways to enable Chat. You can either wait for a prompt in the Messages app asking if you want to see when your friends are typing — a prompt that has shown up almost instantly for me on the last few Android phones I have set up, or you can go into the Settings section of Messages select Chat features and slide the switch next to Enable chat features to the On position.

This same settings page is also where you can go to turn your read receipts on or off, as well as disable the typing indicator whenever you’re typing and control what happens if Chat fails to send a message.

If you run into issues with sending messages, you can also view the current status of your phone’s connection to the Chat service in the settings section of the app. As long as it says Connected, your phone number is registered with Chat and should use the service whenever you’re talking to a contact who also has Chat enabled.

That’s an important aspect of Chat. Whoever you’re talking to will also need to have the feature enabled on their device to use the new chat features, though of course all usual texting features still apply.

You’ll be able to take advantage sooner by getting your friends to use Google Messages. You can guide them through the setup process (or send them a link to this post).

Use the new Chat features in a conversation

After you turn on chat features, the Messages app will continue to work and look the same, and you should keep using it the same way you always have. The app knows when you’re talking to someone through text or another contact with chat turned on.

The easiest way to tell if a conversation is using old-fashioned text messaging or the new chat features is to look at the text box before you start typing. If the box says “Chat message” then the conversation will have typing indicators, read receipts, and the rest of the features that RCS Messaging offers. Another way to quickly identify the type of messages you’re sending is by the color of the text bubble. A regular text conversation will have a light blue bubble, while a chat message will be a darker shade of blue.

A fun feature available in chat is adding reactions to messages. Just long-press on a message until a bubble shows up, presenting you with a few different options, including like, love, laughter or anger.

When chat features are in use, you’ll see delivered and read receipts underneath each message you’ve sent, and you can send full-resolution photos and share files with fellow chat users. You don’t have to do anything special to send a high-resolution image, just tap on the photo icon in the app and pick a photo or video. You’ll see a loading circle on the image as it’s uploaded and sent, but otherwise the process looks and works the same as sending a text message.

Because Chat works over mobile data or Wi-Fi, you can put your phone in airplane mode and you’ll still be able to send and receive messages with other Chat users using only a Wi-Fi connection.

Switching phones? Make sure you turn Chat off

Just like Apple’s iMessage tries holding onto your phone number if you forget to disable it, so does Chat. Before you remove the SIM card from your phone, make sure to turn off Chat. If you forget to turn it off before moving your SIM card to a new phone, chat features could continue to work for up to eight days. Meaning, you may not get messages sent to your number by someone else who is using chat.

Disable Chat by opening Settings > Chat features in the Messages app and slide the switch next to Enable chat features to the Off position. I suggest waiting a few minutes after turning it off to let Google’s servers process the request, and ensure your number doesn’t get stuck in limbo.

How to tell if a chat is encrypted

Right now, only conversations between you and another person using chat are encrypted. Encryption for group chats is still in the works. There isn’t anything special you need to do to start using the one-to-one encryption feature, but it is possible to check it’s working properly.

When starting a conversation with another Chat user, you’ll see a banner on your screen with a lock icon and a confirmation that you’re “Chatting with [name/number].” Furthermore, the send icon, which looks like a paper airplane, will have a small lock icon on it. The timestamps included in your conversation will also include a lock icon. That lock is a quick and easy way to see that a particular message or conversation is encrypted.

Speaker 1: PlayStation VR two is coming in 2023 and PlayStation already had a VR headset that came out in 2016. This headset has been announced [00:00:30] over time. We got a lot of details about it, and it works with the PlayStation five, which is already really hard to buy, but the headset takes advantage of the PlayStation five graphics and add a whole new bunch of things to after four games playing. It basically adds up to the headset that I would’ve loved back in 2016 with a few extra things. Now keep in mind, PlayStation VR two is not a standalone headset. So, and anyone is used the Oculus quest slash merest where you’re fully moving around with no tether. This needs to be tethered [00:01:00] with USBC cable back to the PlayStation five, similar to PC gaming, but there are some advantages here. You may not be aware of. Number one, the graphics are really good based on the handful of yamas I’ve seen so far, it looks extremely vivid.

Speaker 1: The graphics have really nice lighting effects and it’s much more equivalent to the sort of stuff you’d be playing on a gaming PC, perhaps even better. If some games learned to optimize some of this stuff. The other thing is that the trade off for being tethered is the headset’s really [00:01:30] light. Like I was shocked when I wore it. It’s probably the lightest VR headset that I’ve ever worn. The headset feels smaller and it feels just very comfortable to wear even over my big glasses, which is not a given. And it has similar to the PlayStation VR, these kind of like rubber things that drop down over your glasses, keep it protected, but you move the headset in and out to adjust. So it’s not like a pair of goggles that you’re pushing right against your eyes. PlayStation VR two does not use a [00:02:00] camera connected to your TV.

Speaker 1: Instead. It’s got built in cameras for tracking and it also is able to show pass through. So that’s something that’s similar to what the quest does. It can scan your environment including kind of meshing out obstacles and it draws a barrier around what your Playspace is, which you can then alter with a tool to paint it again, similar to what Oculus quest and other VR headsets already do. The other thing this does is has, is you know, additional [00:02:30] adjustments for your eyes, um, to change eye distance. It also has something that no other mainstream VR headset has had at this point. Eye tracking eye tracking is calibrated with this cool little tool that they show where you, you blink your eyes and you’re able to look around and calibrate the eye thing and it works automatically. But once the infrared eye tracking happens, it’s being used for something called foviated rendering.

Speaker 1: And that’s to only focus on the area around where your, your eyes are directly looking [00:03:00] to maximize the graphics resolution. This stuff happens invisibly. So everything just looks really good. And the area around it is slightly less super rich, but you don’t notice it. And it really seemed to work very well. A lot of games that I played were employing that, but were not using eye tracking for other interactional stuff. There’s all sorts of possibilities for the way. You could focus on things to be able to lock onto them, to have eye contact with people and, and a lot of other interesting ideas that have been discussed before in the future of VR [00:03:30] and AR it’ll be interesting to see how this Springs, that type of development. The other thing that the PlayStation VR two has, that’s pretty new is it’s advanced haptics. Now, if you’ve never thought about haptics and rumble, you should because a lot of the VR headsets like the merest use basic kind of buzzy vibrations.

Speaker 1: If you’ve played a PlayStation five and a play, the dual sense controllers, really advanced haptics that feel very subtle and have this wave wavy rumbly, [00:04:00] uh, spectrum of feelings, that’s translated into these controllers and it’s in the headset. So I thought that was weird, but when you think about it, and when I play these games, what it feels like is you’re getting these waves of feedback, like in the real world, that you can also feel subtly vibrating into your head. It’ll be like, if you felt a train go by and suddenly you could feel it in all different ways that rattle, it adds kind of like a Sonic realism. And there are also adaptive triggers that have force feedback. That’s on the dual sense [00:04:30] for the PlayStation five it’s here and all the weapons that I was using in game demos means there’s real feedback on the triggers. It begins to bleed into the experience and just make these things feel more real. That’s the stuff that excited me the most and the graphics elements. But let me tell you what I played.

Speaker 1: I basically did four games and they’re all ones that have been announced. One of them is horizon call the mountain, which is the unique horizon [00:05:00] themed, uh, game that’s said in the same world as the two games that are already on PlayStation. Uh, it’s a postapocalyptic world full of these like dinosaur robots. If you haven’t seen it before, and this is not meant to, uh, necessarily require you have played those games. It’s much more of an experiential exploratory thing. If you play games like the climb and VR, where you’re climbing up cliff walls, um, or you’ve played games using archery, some of those mechanics were in there. Uh, a lot of it was exploring I was going on this river ride and what [00:05:30] was really cool are things like the scale, seeing things over my head that were rumbling all around me and creating the super vivid look.

Speaker 1: Um, when I reached up my hand and touched a plant moving by the haptics, it felt very gentle. Like I was actually like, it was hitting a glove that I was holding versus like just a buzz. And there were little things to explore, like painting or, you know, drums. It was, it was a little world. And, um, it was, it was very beautifully done and was an extended demo. And I don’t know what comes [00:06:00] next. The other game that I played was star wars tales from the Galaxy’s edge. This is a game I played on, uh, quest two and is being updated and enhanced for the PlayStation VR two this game. Uh, it was interesting to compare how it felt versus playing on the quest too. The difference here again was really the graphics realism, which started to feel much more cinematic. And you could see the textures and especially it was especially lighting felt a [00:06:30] lot more convincing.

Speaker 1: And the coolest thing were the, as I picked up all the weapons and blasters, I felt the kickback and the feedback as I was using them, they really felt like different tools. And I felt like I could even maybe recognize them without looking at them, uh, walking dead saints and sin. Chapter two is again, a game that’s been on other platforms. There’s a chapter two. So again, uh, it’s a lot of swapping out of stuff all around your body, which is a, a VR, uh, interface mechanic. I didn’t know where my flashlight was or my, [00:07:00] or my, uh, <laugh>, you know, where the heck is my rifle, but I’m used to playing that. What was interesting here again, was that I felt like I was getting a little more of a subtle feel for everything was how I was loading stuff. When I click things on and off, it’s like, wouldn’t you get feedback from something on your phone?

Speaker 1: And the vibration can be very subtle, like a little tap that’s what’s going on here versus a hard buzz. And the other game that I played was resident evil village, which I was terrified to play because I hate VR horror games. I did not play seven. [00:07:30] Um, I’d never want to, but I might play it now because resident evil village wasn’t as bad as I thought, what I took in having not played it before was that it was beautifully environmental. When I walked through this, going up to this castle that I was marveling at walking through the hallways. Again, a lighting quality was extremely good, looking at a window and seeing how the window cast in light, walking up to a painting, which looked eerily real when, um, I was being surrounded. And then suddenly the, the famous lady was like licking my hand, [00:08:00] um, licking the blood off my hand.

Speaker 1: And the, the look in her eyes was like haunting. And I thought like, I was really there, you know, a terrifying, gigantic, uh, fat man surrounded by neat. You know what? This has even playing the game. I’m just naively going into this and being amazed at the scale of it. But it felt like exploring sleep no more and other immersive theater things a lot more. I felt like I wanted to go pick up and explore things. Um, sometimes when I played these games and this is very early on in, [00:08:30] um, in the PlayStation headquarters, sometimes the tracking, you know, had to reorient, which is something that happens on a lot of VR headsets. Sometimes the visual and haptic realism were so good that I was like even more bit thrown, but I’m sure some of that as we get closer will be worked out. I’m curious to see, but the feeling of it that haptics and the graphics realism were good enough that I’m really curious to see what comes next.

Speaker 1: A lot of these games reports and will we see a new generation of games come out that [00:09:00] really make the most of this unreal engine five, uh, is promised all sorts of visual realism. That will be some sort of like blend with what with cinema and games start to intertwine with. And I was talking with, um, I LMX lab about that and about how the future of making these games could start to get really, really strange. Similarly talking with the team behind horizon called the mountain. I’m really curious to see how that inspires where they think about making games next and [00:09:30] use eye tracking to begin to find ways to interact with avatars and possibly to get heat maps. So the game can clue you in, on stuff that you’re looking at without you realizing it, triggering events more automatically and dynamically,

Speaker 2: Especially with the eye tracking, being able to push the graphics even further with the foviated rendering. Um, it’s, it’s great.

Speaker 1: Some other cool things I liked about the headset is that I wore the pulse, uh, over your, um, spatial audio headphones, but you can [00:10:00] plug in any headphones, including earbuds. And there’s a crazy little earbud holder. That’s built into the side of these things. That’s like genius, and you just pop them in and pull them back out. Um, I’m curious to use that, but I remember the previous PlayStation VR, they kind of dangle, and I feel like the whole package of this is a lot easier to plug in. I didn’t do the setup myself, but the fact that it’s one cable and lightweight could really change how easy this is to use. I know with the original PlayStation VR, I kind of began to abandon it because at a lot of [00:10:30] breakout box stuff, it had that camera. There was just a lot of things to set up.

Speaker 1: This is really a one cable plugin solution, even though it does need to be tethered. And these sense controllers, let me just reiterate. Sony’s never had its own dedicated controllers for VR. You had to use those old PlayStation move controllers or use, you know, the, the dual shock. The fact that these controllers are, are finally finished in a way that feels really great is wonderful. Two particular things. I like the waiting of them feels lighter because [00:11:00] the way the ring is moved back on the hand, I felt like my hands could kind of float. If you ever use valve index controllers, which have like a force feedback grip. These don’t have that, but the grip and the secondary button, which is clickable are kind of feel like one in the same. So I felt like I was grabbing stuff with that, with that instead of, you know, kind of a three prong thing that I usually do on the Oculus touch,

Speaker 1: PlayStation, VR [00:11:30] two, we just don’t know when it’s coming out and we don’t know how much it’s gonna cost. We do know it’s coming in 2023, which is not now, this is 2022, but it’s going to be something to look forward to. That’s definitely happening next year. And at that point, there may be other types of competition. Will there be a quest three at that point? Could there be other headsets that emerge? What about Apple’s expected headset? 2023 could be where a lot of stuff is happening in VR. Thank you for watching. And if you have questions about the PlayStation [00:12:00] VR tier, are you interested? Do you play VR a lot? Put them in the comments below, make sure to like, and subscribe and thank you for watching.

Many of the upcoming games already have release dates, but there could be more details as well as a surprise or two.

When is the next Nintendo Direct?

The next Nintendo Direct will happen on Tuesday, 7 a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET.

How can I watch the Nintendo Direct?

The livestream will air on Nintendo’s YouTube channel and will last 40 minutes. Nintendo UK tweeted Monday it will not air the event live on its YouTube channel out of respect for national mourning following the death of Queen Elizabeth II but will have it available as a video-on-demand at 4 p.m. UK time.

What games will Nintendo show during its Nintendo Direct?

Nintendo already announced some of its 2022 winter lineup, including No Man’s Sky, Bayonetta 3, Sonic Frontiers, Persona 5 Royal and — likely be its biggest title of the season — Pokemon Scarlet and Violet (which comes out Nov. 18).

A few games speculated to get official dates are Alex Wake Remastered, Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion. There may also be more details about Nintendo’s biggest game for 2023, The Legends of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2, which was delayed earlier this year.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 was a 2007 hit on the PSP and, after years of clamoring from fans, it’s being remade on modern consoles as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion. It’s more than just an opportunity to play a 15-year-old classic, as longtime Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase said, it’s also part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Project. In other words, the story of Crisis Core is essential to the next two Remake games.

Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming game.

What is Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion’s Release Date?

Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion is coming out Dec. 13, Square Enix revealed Tuesday, on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, the Nintendo Switch and Windows.

Is it a straight remake?

Yes. Final Fantasy 7 Remake, untrue to its name, ended in a way that diverts from the original PlayStation title. In fact, the whole point of FF7R’s ending was to signify what happens in the subsequent two games will be different to what happened in the OG version. Speaking to GameSpot, however, Crisis Core’s developers confirmed that no story elements from the PSP game would be changed.

“Crisis Core Reunion’s story is actually going to be a very faithful retelling of the original story, so there’s no additional story content,” said Mariko Sato, one of the game’s producers.

But the development team is doing more than giving Crisis Core a glow up. All the dialogue will get voice acting, and there will be tweaks to gameplay and combat — probably a good thing considering the game’s age.

Why is a Crisis Core remake a big deal?

There are three reasons you should care about Crisis Core Final Fantasy 7 Reunion. First is the most simple: It’s an awesome game, especially if you’re a fan of FF7. It’s a lengthy RPG that takes players through the towns, cities and regions that they first experienced back when Cloud was just a handful of purple and yellow polygons. It gives depth to characters who were on the periphery of Final Fantasy 7, and shows a world before a certain Soldier became a planet-murdering maniac.

Second, Square Enix has been unusually coy about bringing the game out to new consoles. Though the company has ported PS2-era games like Final Fantasy X and Kingdom Hearts to every console imaginable, Crisis Core has yet to get any sort of remaster treatment. That’s unusual, because it’s not like it wasn’t popular: Over 2 million copies of the game were sold. Yet, until Reunion, you had to have a PSP on hand to play Crisis Core.

Finally, Zack’s story appears to be crucial to the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Why do we need to know about Zack Fair?

This section contains spoilers for Final Fantasy 7, Remake and Crisis Core. 

In the 1997 Final Fantasy 7, Zack Fair was only seen in flashback scenes. Anyone who’s played that game knows that Zack was a mentor to Cloud, and saved his life — but that he was gunned down by Shinra militia before the events of Final Fantasy 7. This is part of why 2007’s Crisis Core is so memorable. It made you care more about Zack and his relationships with other characters, which made his inevitable fate all the more devastating.

But the end of Final Fantasy 7 Remake saw Cloud and the gang defeat the “arbiters of fate.” You can read a full explainer on what that means here — but the short story is that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy takes place in another dimension, and the enigmatic “arbiters of fate” creatures were responsible for making all events play out in this dimension as it did in the 1997 original. With them killed off, however, there’s nothing keeping the chronology in tact. The death of Aerith, Cloud’s amnesia, the ultimate defeat of Sephiroth: None of this is guaranteed anymore.

Perhaps most crucially, that also leaves the fate on one Zack Fair unknown. At the end of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, we see Zack recover from the Shinra militia attack that in other dimensions had ended his story. In the ending to Final Fantasy 7 Intergrade, a DLC pack featuring Yuffie, Zack barges into Sector 7’s Church to find Aerith, a past flame, only to discover she’s gone. So we know that Zack is alive, though it’s not clear in which dimension he’s in.