Tech Digest daily roundup: Andrew Tate content pushed to 13yo on YouTube Shorts
Andrew Tate content was pushed to the account of a 13-year-old boy after just over an hour of watching videos on YouTube Shorts — without his profile seeking out any clips of the controversial influencer. Sky News set up a fake account of a young teenage boy to see whether YouTube Shorts, Instagram and TikTok would promote videos featuring Tate or his brother Tristan unprompted. Despite Andrew Tate being banned from all three platforms, our investigation found that almost 30 videos featuring the Tates were served to the account of “Ollie Smith” within a two-hour period on YouTube Shorts. Sky News
New data from the U.K. shows that electric vehicle sales reached record highs in March, marking the strongest month for sustainable powertrains in the history of the region. Sales for the month were led by the Tesla Model Y. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said on Wednesday that new vehicle registrations surged to 287,825 total units for Q1, led by 46,626 cars in March alone, which was the best month in terms of EV adoption ever. The jump in registrations for March represented an 18.6 percent growth compared to the same month in 2022. Teslarati
A siren will go off on nearly every smartphone in the UK on Sunday 23 April, the government has announced. The 10 seconds of sound and vibration at 15:00 BST will test a new emergency alerts system. The test had originally been planned for the early evening but was moved to avoid clashing with an FA Cup semi-final, which kicks off at 16:30. The government was also keen to avoid a clash with the London Marathon, which starts at 09:30 on that Sunday. The alert system will be used to warn of extreme weather events, such as flash floods or wildfires. BBC
Samsung’s rumored Galaxy Watch 6 might bring some significant design changes to the series if the latest rumors are to be believed. The news this time around is that the device’s watch face will have a smaller bezel to increase the display’s size. This information comes from renowned industry leaker Ice Universe on Twitter(opens in new tab) who claims the screen size on the Galaxy Watch 6 is “100 percent confirmed” to be 1.47 inches, up from the Galaxy Watch 5’s 1.4-inch display. As a result, the resolution will subsequently be “improved”, leading to a better “screen proportion”. Tech Radar
These days Motorola is mostly known as a mid- to low-end smartphone manufacturer thanks to product lines like the Moto G, but the Lenovo division still makes flagship smartphones. The latest is the Motorola Edge 40 Pro, which the company says is headed to Europe in a few days and Latin America in a few weeks….In Europe, the Edge 40 Pro is 899.99 Euros, or about $982, so this phone needs to be on par with the best Android phones out there. The specs are close, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, 12GB of RAM, and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Ars Technica
Apple is heavily rumored to reveal its long-awaited mixed reality headset in just a couple of months, but that reveal seems to be arriving at a time when demand for high-end VR is actually quite low. According to a new blog post from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, some of the biggest recent bets in VR have largely flopped.
Kuo reports that:
Sony has cut its 2023 production plan for the PS VR2 by about 20 percent.
The product lifecycle shipment for Meta’s Quest Pro is only around 300,000 units.
Pico (China’s largest AR/VR headset brand) shipments in 2022 were more than 40 percent lower than expected.In other words, the impressive PSVR 2 hasn’t been as popular as Sony may have hoped, Meta Quest Pro sales barely scratch the surface of the Quest 2’s nearly 20 million units sold, and the ByteDance-owned Pico is struggling, too. The Verge
