The Morning After: Russia, Ukraine and social media
Several tech companies are making moves following Russia's invasion.
Facebook has pulled a network of fake accounts attempting to spread Russian disinformation in Ukraine. The company said it had removed about 40 accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram that were detected over the last 48 hours.
Meanwhile, Russia has been restricting Twitter access for its citizens since early Saturday morning. According to internet monitor NetBlocks, there was a nearly complete blackout of the platform across all major domestic telecom providers. On Friday, the country’s telecom regulator, Roskomnadzor, began partially restricting access to Facebook after the social network refused to stop fact checking and labeling content from Russia’s state-owned news organizations.
— Mat Smith
The biggest stories you might have missed
Ukraine asks international volunteers to join 'IT army' against Russia
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Samsung's new Galaxy Book laptops get better webcams and brighter screens
Hitting the Books: The case against tomorrow's robots looking like people
Huawei's new MateBook X Pro has six speakers packed inside it
Valve Steam Deck Review
Its first portable combines the familiar with something new.
Valve's first portable isn’t a mobile device to take on your everyday commute. It's more like a Steam Controller and a Steam Machine in one hefty package, and it isn’t all that comfortable to play for hours on end. But while it's hard for Senior Editor Jessica Conditt to recommend the Steam Deck as an introduction to PC gaming, it's a great second device for the millions of existing Steam users around the world, one that opens up new places to play around the house.
'Pokémon Scarlet' and 'Violet' head to Switch in late 2022
It’s set to be an ‘open-world adventure.’
The Pokémon Company just surprised most of us. It revealed Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, two new Pokémon games, are set to launch sometime in late 2022. Building on the recently released Pokémon Legends: Arceus, developer Game Freak said the games would offer an "open-world adventure" for players to discover. Perhaps it’ll strike a balance between the newest Pokémon game and the mainline series.
Huawei’s MatePad Paper is half e-reader, half tablet
And it works with the company’s stylus.
A lot of us are obsessed with e-ink devices. The latest addition is a substantially sized e-ink tablet from Huawei. The MatePad Paper has a 10.3-inch grayscale screen with an anti-glare, reflective display to aid low-light use. The Paper can reproduce 256 shades of greyscale to display text and images — and even video. Not only does it have surprisingly tiny bezels, with an 86.3% screen-to-body ratio, but it’s also is compatible with Huawei’s M-Pencil, its second-generation stylus.
TCL’s latest concept phone folds inwards and outwards
But getting the screen to work is staggeringly difficult.
TCL seems to love showing off its prototypes, and it’s doing the same for MWC 2022. Alongside an array of new phones and tablets, the company just debuted a concept device tentatively called the Ultra Flex — a phone with a 360-degree rotating hinge and a flexible display that bends with it. This thing can fold in on itself as well as outwards. However, it’s a little… no, very, delicate.
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