Don’t be dismayed that Samsung passed on the Galaxy Note in 2021… you might get your stylus-equipped phone before too long. Frequent tipster OnLeaks has shared renders with Zouton, 91Mobiles and Digit that reportedly show the designs of next year’s Galaxy S22 phones, including an Ultra model aimed squarely at Note fans. It would effectively be a sequel to the Galaxy Note 20, complete with an S-Pen slot and less rounded corners. There would also be a fourth camera you didn’t even see on the S21 Ultra, although it’s not clear what functionality you’d get.

The other models wouldn’t be quite so thrilling, however. If accurate, the renders suggest the S22 and S22+ (possibly badged as the S22 Pro) wouldn’t be radically different from the S21 on the outside. They’d sport flatter backs and a slightly refined camera bump, but not much more. Most of the changes would sit underneath. Rumors have the regular S22 models jumping to a 50MP main camera (up from 12MP) and using Qualcomm’s next-gen Snapdragon chip or Samsung’s equivalent Exynos.

OnLeaks/91Mobiles

It’s not certain when Samsung will launch the S22 family, although it notably bumped up the S21 launch to January this year. If the company repeats that pattern, Note enthusiasts might only have to wait a few months more than usual to get their fix. That is, if they haven’t already bought an S21 Ultra or Z Fold 3 and the pen to match — the lack of clear messaging on the Note’s future may have cost Samsung some sales.

In Amazon’s flagship fulfillment center, the machines run the show

Matt Day, Bloomberg

Amazon’s Kent, Washington facility has long been home to many of the company’s high-tech innovations. Bloomberg takes us inside “BFI4” for another look at the shipping location that’s run my algorithms and robots. 

How Google spies on its employees

Sarah Krouse, The Information

In a report on various instances of surveillance at Google, The Information discusses how things like researching COBRA health insurance info and screenshotting and using encrypted messaging apps can draw the ire of the company’s security team.

How Facebook’s ‘metaverse’ became a political strategy in Washington

Elizabeth Dwoskin, Cat Zakrzewski and Nick Miroff, The Washington Post

Between misinformation, privacy and antitrust debates, there’s no shortage of challenges for Facebook at any given time. With scrutiny piling on from the US government, and the possibility of regulation looming, the social network is hoping to prove it’s more than a problem-plagued platform. 

Apple hasn’t published official subscriber numbers for its TV+ streaming service since it launched in 2019, but it may be smaller than analysts previously estimated. According to CNBC, the tech giant told the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees that TV+ has fewer than 20 million subscribers in the US and Canada. A few months ago, Statista published an estimate that puts the service’s subscriber number to 40 million by the end of 2020 in the US alone. 

The firm admitted, however, that the estimate does not “necessarily reveal how many paying subscribers use the service.” CNBC didn’t say whether the 20 million subscribers the company declared were paying customers either. It also didn’t mention how many of those got their subscriptions for free: Apple used to give away year-long subscriptions to customers who purchase new iPhones, iPads and Macs, but it shortened the offer to three months back in June. 

According to the report, having less than 20 million subscribers allowed Apple to pay production crew lower rates than bigger streamers. Under the current contract seen by CNBC, streaming services can pay their employees lower rates if they report less than 20 million subscribers to the IATSE every July 1st, because streaming profitability is “presently uncertain.” The union is negotiating for a better contract, though, since current rules don’t make an exception for tech giants like Apple. It also argues that streaming can no longer be considered “new media.” 

An Apple rep told CNBC that the company pays in line with leading streaming services but refused to comment on the claimed subscriber number. 20 million is but a fraction of the number of subscribers the biggest streaming services have: Netflix claimed 208 million subscribers in April, while Disney+ claimed over 100 million back in March.

Twitter has been trying to limit the toxic replies you can get on its website by giving you tools that allow you to be more proactive in preventing them from going through. In the future, those tools could include a feature that lets you filter potentially offensive replies and another that lets you limit potentially unwelcome accounts from replying. Twitter Senior Product Designer Paula Barcante has released a sneak peek of the features, which are merely concepts at the moment, to seek input from users.

Barcante says Twitter will ask you if you’d like to switch on those controls if it detects potentially harmful replies to your tweets. If your reply filter is on, Twitter won’t show you or anyone else — except the user who wrote the response — the harmful tweets it detects. If you decide to limit unwelcome accounts, users who’ve recently shown patterns of breaking rules won’t be able to reply to your tweets at all. 

Since the process would be automated, Barcante admits that it may not be accurate all the time and may end up filtering out even respective, non-problematic responses. That’s why the company is also exploring the possibility of giving you the option to review filtered tweets and limited accounts. Of course, the final iterations of the tools might look vastly different from these previews if they do get released. 

When asked if toggling on the reply filter would filter out all tweets from an account or just the tweet the website has deemed potentially offensive, Barcante didn’t have an answer yet. She said what she showed was just an “early concept that requires testing and iteration” and that Twitter will provide more details if it decides to launch the tools.