Amazon Fire TV Soundbar PlusMSRP$490.00 Score DetailsUnbox it, plug it in, and enjoy the sound. The Fire TV Soundbar Plus is as easy as it gets.ProsMultiple configurationsEasy set upPowerful soundVery clear dialogueVersatile surround speakersConsNon-upgradeableWeak midrangeNegligible Dolby Atmos effectsTable of ContentsTable of ContentsIs the Amazon Soundbar Plus a Fire TV device?Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus specsAmazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus: whats in the box?Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus: designAmazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus: Setup and connectionsAmazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus: settingsAmazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus: sound qualityConclusionAmazons new Fire TV Soundbar Plus isnt just one product its three. Depending on the version, youll spend $250 for just the soundbar, $375 if you add a wireless subwoofer or $490 for the version with the sub and two wireless surround speakers. However, the first two versions arent upgradeable. You cant add a sub or surrounds to the soundbar-only model and you cant add surrounds to the one that comes with a sub.Recommended VideosAll three have the same capabilities (Dolby Atmos/DTS:X compatibility and Bluetooth streaming), but each will deliver a different listening experience. For this review, Amazon sent us the full $490 version. Since most of my testing time was spent using that configuration, our official score and pros/cons list pertain to that model. However, I also tried the system in its two other flavors and Ill provide some thoughts on these options throughout the review so you can get a sense of the differences.RelatedIve said it before, but its worth repeating: Despite its name, the Fire TV Soundbar Plus is just a sound system. It connects to your TV via HDMI-ARC/eARC (or optical), but theres no built-in video streaming functionality. If your TV doesnt have smart TV features, the Fire TV Soundbar Plus wont make it any smarter.As near as I can figure, Amazon gave it this name because if you own a compatible Amazon Fire TV, your existing remote can control the soundbar, and you can access certain sound settings from your TVs menus.Price$490ColorBlackSpeakersSoundbar: 8, subwoofer: 1, surrounds: 1 eachConnection portsHDMI, optical, USBVideo passthroughNoneAudio formatsDolby 5.1, Dolby Atmos, DTS:XBluetooth codecsSBCWireless musicBluetoothSimon Cohen / Digital TrendsIn the box, you get the soundbar, the wireless surrounds and subwoofer, and everything you need to set up the system and connect it to your TV via HDMI. Power cables, an HDMI cable, a remote with batteries, and even wall-mounting hardware for the soundbar are all included.Youll also find an easy-to-follow quick-start guide. The only thing you may need to buy is an optical cable (or an optical to HDMI adapter) if your TV doesnt have an available HDMI-ARC port.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsWhen I reviewed Amazons first Fire TV Soundbar, I noted that the company had managed to create a budget-friendly speaker that didnt look cheap. That approach has been maintained with the Soundbar Plus. It may not win any design awards, but its simple black chassis and tasteful charcoal fabric grille (also used on the surrounds) should look good in just about any room.The one change that Amazon made with the Plus model is the addition of a small but noticeable Fire TV logo under the top-mounted controls (it also appears on the sub and surrounds). Im averse to any visible branding on home theater products, but if it has to be there, at least its subtle youll only notice it when standing directly above the speakers.Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus in front of a 65-inch TV. Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsAt 37-inches wide, the soundbar should be narrow enough to sit in front of a 40-inch TV. Just keep in mind that at 2.5 inches tall, theres a chance it could block your TVs infrared (IR) receiver. Since theres no IR repeater on the back of the speaker, you may want to measure carefully before you buy. For instance, the legs on Amazons newest Fire TV Omni Mini-LED are 3.1 inches tall, which provides enough space for this soundbar. However, its 43-inch Fire TV Omni has 2.2-inch legs, which might not create enough height for the bottom-mounted IR receiver.I really like that Amazon installed standard threaded mounting holes on both the rear and the bottom of the surround speakers. This considerably increases placement flexibility, letting you use stands or wall-mount brackets if you dont have flat surfaces (or wall outlets) near your ideal locations.The remote is very compact. The buttons are clearly labeled and easy to use, though theyre not backlit (not that I expect them to be at this price). The top rubber membrane will eventually wear out, but until that happens it should provide good protection from accidental spills.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsHonestly, it doesnt get much easier than this. Plug the soundbar into a power outlet, then plug it into your TVs HDMI-ARC port with the provided cable or one of your own. The soundbar will automatically power up and (if your TV is already on) switch to the HDMI input. And youre done.If you buy the model with a sub or sub+surrounds, youll also hear a voice prompt telling you these accessories arent connected. Thats quickly remedied by plugging them in. There are backup connection buttons on each unit, but mine connected to the soundbar automatically once they powered up.Theres no app to download, and no Wi-Fi connection to configure. Just start watching TV.The Soundbar Plus has three ports: HDMI ARC, optical, and USB. I doubt many folks will use the USB feature (for accessing music stored on a hard drive or thumb drive) when Bluetooth is going to be more convenient, but its a nice touch, especially since the remote is equipped with playback controls (you might be surprised at how many remotes donthave them anymore).Assuming your TV has HDMI-ARC, you can use the optical port for a second digital audio source. My vote would be to connect an affordable network music streamer like the Wiim Mini, but you could use a CD player or any other audio device instead.Switching the soundbar to Bluetooth for the first time automatically activates the pairing mode. Once paired with your phone, it will reconnect automatically the next time you use Bluetooth.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsFor a soundbar with no companion app, on-screen settings (on non-Fire TVs), or even an alphanumeric front display, Amazon has managed to pack the Soundbar Plus with a lot of tweaks.Via the remote, you have access to bass, treble, EQ modes, dialogue enhancement, surround mode, and if you get the version with surround speakers, a set of dedicated buttons just for those units.The downside of the design is that most of these settings are step-based, meaning you repeatedly press the relevant button to cycle through the available levels. Bass, for instance, goes from 1 to 9. You need to press the button each time you want to go up a level. Go too far and youll have to around again.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsAlthough whats more annoying is that the speaker announces each level change instead of just using the bars built-in row of LED indicators.Speaking of those LEDs, theyre the only way to get a confirmation of whether your audio signal is recognized as Dolby Atmos. If it is, the middle three LEDs flash green just once when you begin playback.You get used to all of this, but Amazon, if youre listening, I think this is an area for improvement.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsEven if you opt for the soundbar-only version, the Fire TV Soundbar Plus has plenty of power and can deliver surprisingly good low-end bass. If youve been getting by on your TVs built-in speakers, youll notice a massive difference the moment you turn this speaker on.Dialogue clarity (a must-have for any soundbar) is especially good out of the box, and you get an additional five levels of optional dialogue enhancement. I ended up sticking with level 1 by the time I got to 5, I found the effect too intense.Adding the subwoofer, as you might expect, does wonders for the low end, taking it from something you can hear to something you can begin to really feel. In short, it does what a sub should do (at least in a home theater context) by making movies feel more dramatic and immersive. Just keep your expectations in check: its a good little subwoofer, but it doesnt pack the power or precision youll find in pricier systems.But in the end, its Amazons surrounds that surprised me the most. They dont look like much on the outside, but using the remotes discrete surround volume and balance buttons gives you a huge amount of control over these speakers. Placed at the ends of my couch (about 5 feet on either side of my listening position) I could make them almost as loud as the front right/left channels. This not only bodes well for getting the level of immersion youre personally comfortable with, but it will also help with placement Im pretty sure I could have put them three times as far from me and still heard them clearly.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsThe one downside to the Soundbar Plus is that it shares the regular Fire TV Soundbars weak midrange. Despite having several EQ modes to choose from (movie, music, sports, and night) and separate controls for bass and treble (impressive when you consider that Sonys flagship soundbars dont have this), I still couldnt get the system to sound the way I wanted.The highs (even with dialogue enhancement off) felt too peaky. Pushing treble levels down helped with this, but the side effect was that things started to get muddy.Im probably overstating the issue. I tend to listen for these things, so I tend to hear them. You may not be bothered by it all.Music listening can be thrilling on this system, but to hear it, youll have to sacrifice the convenience of Bluetooth. Streaming over Bluetooth is fine. Want some background music for a get-together? Its perfect for that. On the other hand, listening to a music app from a streaming device (or your smart TV) over HDMI/optical, is way better.Simon Cohen / Digital TrendsOn the soundbar-only version, stereo separation is good in normal mode and using the surround mode expands the soundstage without overly diluting the focus. The surround-equipped system is a lot more fun. It somehow manages to take the sounds from the outer edges of the left/right channels and pushes them and just them to the rear speakers, something I noticed when listening to Fleetwood Macs Dreams. I wasnt expecting such a sophisticated effect from a sub-$500 set of speakers.What I can say definitively, is that you shouldnt buy this system if youre looking for a true Dolby Atmos experience.Yes, technically the Fire TV Soundbar Plus is a Dolby Atmos and DTS:X compatible speaker. However, the standalone soundbar model is limited to 3.1 channels (it processes the low-frequency effects channel using its own woofers) as is the subwoofer-equipped model. Only the model with the surrounds and sub can do more, but its still limited to 5.1 channels.All this to say, each of these systems relies on virtualization for the height-channel effects that we tend to associate with 3D formats like Atmos and DTS:X. And though some virtualized sound systems have convinced me that there are phantom ceiling speakers above me, the Soundbar Plus isnt one of them.Dont get me wrong, Atmos (I didnt try any DTS:X) doesnt sound bad. In fact, running through all of my usual test scenes from movies like Mad Max: Fury Road, No Time To Die, Unbroken, and Ford v Ferrari, proved plenty enjoyable. Its just that I didnt hear as many of the distinct spatial elements that Ive heard from more capable systems.Other than the small critiques Ive mentioned throughout the review, I really like the Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus, in all of its flavors. The problem is that when you look at a competitor like Vizio, which sells a variety of 5.1 Dolby Atmos models some for as little as $200 its hard to come up with good reasons why you should spend more on Amazons version.We havent checked out Vizios latest 2024/5 models, but weve reviewed and been mightily impressed by their predecessors and we have no reason to think the new ones will perform any worse.I think youll enjoy the Fire TV Soundbar Plus, but you may find a better value elsewhere.Editors Recommendations

The utopian vision of communications technology imagined a world of shared information and ever-growing understanding. Human beings got in the way.

check and mate Complexity physics finds crucial tipping points in chess games Physicist used interaction graphs to show how pieces attack and defend to analyze 20,000 top matches. Jennifer Ouellette Jan 24, 2025 1:02 pm | 4 A depiction of the chess match between masters Howard Staunton and Pierre Saint-Amant, on 16 December 1843. Credit: Jean-Henri Marlet/Public domain A depiction of the chess match between masters Howard Staunton and Pierre Saint-Amant, on 16 December 1843. Credit: Jean-Henri Marlet/Public domain Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreThe game of chess has long been central to computer science and AI-related research, most notably in IBM's Deep Blue in the 1990s and, more recently, AlphaZero. But the game is about more than algorithms, according to Marc Barthelemy, a physicist at the Paris-Saclay University in France, with layers of depth arising from the psychological complexity conferred by player strategies.Now, Barthelmey has taken things one step further by publishing a new paper in the journal Physical Review E that treats chess as a complex system, producing a handy metric that can help predict the proverbial "tipping points" in chess matches.In his paper, Barthelemy cites Richard Reti, an early 20th-century chess master who gave a series of lectures in the 1920s on developing a scientific understanding of chess. It was an ambitious program involving collecting empirical data, constructing typologies, and devising laws based on those typologies, but Reti's insights fell by the wayside as advances in computer science came to dominate the field. That's understandable. "With its simple rules yet vast strategic depth, chess provides an ideal platform for developing and testing algorithms in AI, machine learning, and decision theory," Barthelemy writes.Barthelemy's own expertise is in the application of statistical physics to complex systems, as well as the emerging science of cities. He realized that the history of the scientific study of chess had overlooked certain key features, most notably how certain moves at key moments can drastically alter the game; the matches effectively undergo a kind of phase transition. The rise of online chess platforms means there are now very large datasets ripe for statistical analysis, and researchers have made use of that, studying power-law distributions, for example, as well as response time distribution in rapid chess and long-range memory effects in game sequences.For his analysis, Barthelemy chose to represent chess as a decision tree in which each "branch" leads to a win, loss, or draw. Players face the challenge of finding the best move amid all this complexity, particularly midgame, in order to steer gameplay into favorable branches. That's where those crucial tipping points come into play. Such positions are inherently unstable, which is why even a small mistake can have a dramatic influence on a match's trajectory.A case of combinatorial complexity Example on a position taken from Mehedlishvili-Van Forrest. Marc Barthelemy, 2025 Example on a position taken from Mehedlishvili-Van Forrest. Marc Barthelemy, 2025 Interaction graph showing white knight as the key piece in the preceding position. Marc Barthelemy, 2025 Interaction graph showing white knight as the key piece in the preceding position. Marc Barthelemy, 2025 Example on a position taken from Mehedlishvili-Van Forrest. Marc Barthelemy, 2025 Interaction graph showing white knight as the key piece in the preceding position. Marc Barthelemy, 2025 Barthelemy has re-imagined a chess match as a network of forces in which pieces act as the network's nodes, and the ways they interact represent the edges, using an interaction graph to capture how different pieces attack and defend one another. The most important chess pieces are those that interact with many other pieces in a given match, which he calculated by measuring how frequently a node lies on the shortest path between all the node pairs in the network (its "betweenness centrality").He also calculated so-called "fragility scores," which indicate how easy it is to remove those critical chess pieces from the board. And he was able to apply this analysis to more than 20,000 actual chess matches played by the world's top players over the last 200 years.Barthelemy found that his metric could indeed identify tipping points in specific matches. Furthermore, when he averaged his analysis over a large number of games, an unexpected universal pattern emerged. We observe a surprising universality: the average fragility score is the same for all players and for all openings, Barthelemy writes. And in famous chess matches, "the maximum fragility often coincides with pivotal moments, characterized by brilliant moves that decisively shift the balance of the game.Specifically, fragility scores start to increase about eight moves before the critical tipping point position occurs and stay high for some 15 moves after that. "These results suggest that positional fragility follows a common trajectory, with tension peaking in the middle game and dissipating toward the endgame," he writes. "This analysis highlights the complex dynamics of chess, where the interaction between attack and defense shapes the game's overall structure."Physical Review E, 2025. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.00.004300 (About DOIs).Jennifer OuelletteSenior WriterJennifer OuelletteSenior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 4 Comments

BP MVP For real, we may be taking blood pressure readings all wrong Blood pressure readings while lying down beat seated readings at predicting heart risks. Beth Mole Jan 24, 2025 11:43 am | 25 Credit: Getty | PhotoAlto/Michele Constantini Credit: Getty | PhotoAlto/Michele Constantini Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreLast year, a study highlighted that your doctor's office might be taking your blood pressure wrong. The current best practice is to take seated blood pressure readings with a detailed protocol: Patients must not eat, drink, or exercise for 30 minutes prior; they must have an empty bladder and sit calmly for five minutes prior to the first reading; they must sit with their feet uncrossed and flat on the floor; their back should be supported; anda big one that's often overlookedthey must keep the arm to be measured resting on a flat surface at the height of their heart, not higher or lower.While the setup is often different from what happens in a bustling medical office, a new study blows away quibbles over protocol and suggests that even when done perfectly, the method is second-rate. We shouldn't be sitting at all when we take our blood pressurewe should be lying down.According to the study, published in JAMA Cardiology and led by researchers at Harvard, blood pressure readings measured while lying down were significantly better at indicating risks of cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart failure, and death than were seated blood pressure readings alone.For instance, people who had high blood pressure readings while lying down but not while seated had an estimated 53 percent higher relative risk of coronary heart disease than people with normal blood pressure. They had a 51 percent higher risk of heart failure, a 62 percent higher risk of stroke, a 78 percent higher risk of fatal coronary heart disease, and a 34 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality.For people who had high blood pressure readings only when sitting (normal readings while lying down), there was no statistically significant difference in risk of coronary heart disease, heart failure, or stroke compared to people with normal blood pressure. The only statistically significant differences were a 41 percent higher risk of fatal coronary heart disease (compared to the 78 percent seen in those with high readings lying down) and an 11 percent higher risk of all-cause mortality.(In this study, high blood pressure readings were defined for both positions as those with systolic readings (the top number) of 130 mm Hg or greater or diastolic readings (the bottom number) of 80 mm Hg or greater.)The people with the highest risks across the board were those who had high blood pressure readings while both sitting and lying down."These findings suggest that measuring supine [lying down] BP may be useful for identifying elevated BP and latent CVD risk," the researchers conclude.Strengths and hypothesesFor now, the findings should be considered preliminary. Such an analysis and finding should be repeated with a different group of people to confirm the link. And as to the bigger question of whether using medication to lower supine blood pressure (rather than seated blood pressure) is more effective at reducing risk, it's likely that clinical trials will be necessary.Still, the analysis had some notable strengths that make the findings attention-worthy. The study's size and design are robust. Researchers tapped into data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study, a study established in 1987 with middle-aged people living in one of four US communities (Forsyth County, North Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Washington County, Maryland).This study included data from 11,369 ARIC participants, mostly White and Black, and as such, the results are considered generalizable to a broad population. ARIC study staff underwent rigorous training to conduct the study. Measurements were highly standardized, researchers had extensive health information and data on the participants, and the data included more than three decades of follow-up.The findings also jibe with previous studies finding that high blood pressure readings during nightly sleep (when people are generally lying down) are also strongly linked to higher cardiovascular risks. Normally, blood pressure naturally drops during sleep, but those who maintain a higher pressure face substantial risk. While the ARIC study did not include blood pressure readings during sleep, it's hypothesized that the lying-down position may be a factor in the associated risks of nocturnal high blood pressure.As for why lying-down blood pressure may be more telling than sitting pressure, researchers only have hypotheses. It could be that lying-down readings are a more precise assessment of true resting blood pressure, which is what seated readings try to ascertain (hence the detailed protocol). It could be that the bodily mechanisms causing high blood pressure while lying down are more directly linked to cardiovascular outcomes. Or maybe high blood pressure while lying down is simply harder on the heart and brain than it is when upright.Researchers will need more data to clarify the role of lying-down blood pressure readings in estimating cardiovascular risks. But for those with blood pressure monitors at home, it might not be a terrible idea to see how your readings compare between sitting and lying down. The authors note that in the ARIC study, lying-down readings were done after a 20-minute rest period in that position. Readings were taken up to 5 times every 20 to 30 seconds over the course of two minutes. The researchers note that future studies evaluating the use of lying-down measurement in medical appointments should look to see if shorter rest periods would also work.Beth MoleSenior Health ReporterBeth MoleSenior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technicas Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 25 Comments

A battery pouch with rectangular holesLiangbing Hu/Teng LiA stretchy and flexible battery pouch filled with strategically placed holes is more breathable than cotton. That could make it an ideal power source for wearable sports or fitness devices built directly into clothing.This is especially useful for athletes or individuals who wear electronics for extended periods smart clothing for fitness tracking, medical monitoring devices and similar applications that demand both comfort and reliable performance, says Lin Xu at Yale University. AdvertisementTo design the new battery, Xu and his colleagues created a pattern of long, rectangular holes in a pouch cell battery a type of lithium battery that resembles a flat bundle with a limited degree of bendability. Simulations showed how the array of rectangular holes enabled the battery to be stretched or folded 180 degrees without tearing, compared with alternative hole patterns involving squares or circles.One challenge was maintaining enough active material to keep the batterys energy density high too many or too large holes would reduce the energy storage capacity, says Xu. We had to balance mechanical stretchability with electrical performance.When stretched by 10 per cent or even folded up, the holey battery design could still resist physical stress and continue to power LED light bulbs with the stretching and folding experiments each performed 100 times. Testing in a temperature and humidity chamber also showed that the battery was twice as breathable as cotton. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox.Sign up to newsletterAs a practical demonstration of the possible uses, the researchers wove the battery into a lab coat and tested its performance while the wearer ran around exercising. Its holes enabled the battery to quickly dissipate heat so it would not feel painful or trap sweat on the wearers skin.The battery still needs more wear-and-tear testing, so the researchers plan to test its performance in commercial health monitoring devices and sports gear.They are also investigating how to best scale up production automated manufacturing must be able to provide consistent hole placement and sealing to avoid leaks or short circuits in the battery pouch.Journal reference:Matter DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2025.101959Topics:

The expanding hole illusion seems to mess with your mind, but really your eyes are to blameAkiyoshi Kitaoka, Ritsumeikan University, JapanThe optical illusion seen above makes the viewer feel as if they are falling into an expanding hole and now we have a good explanation for why this happens.Optical tricks can be caused by different elements of our visual and neural systems, even when the effects are similar. For example, the spinning circles of the Pinna-Brelstaff illusion are created by a communication delay between different regions of the brain that process vision. Meanwhile, another spinning circle illusion,

Shopify has laid off employees in its customer support organization, BI has learned.This division of the company has undergone multiple rounds of smaller, quiet layoffs since 2022.The e-commerce platform company continues to hire third-party customer support staff.Shopify quietly laid off employees in its Support division this week, according to five people familiar with the matter. It was not immediately clear how many employees lost their jobs, but one person estimated that it was at least a dozen.Shopify's Support teams troubleshoot issues for the millions of merchants who use the platform to sell products.Employees who were impacted by the job cuts lost access to company systems during or immediately after a brief meeting with HR, making it difficult for them to ascertain how many of their coworkers had also lost their jobs.Shopify representatives did not immediately return Business Insider's request for comment on the layoffs.Shopify's Support division has undergone many changes in recent years.In early 2023, the company began "Code Yellow," a project aimed at improving customer service levels that leaders said had "deteriorated beyond acceptable ranges." As part of that project, it embraced using generative AI to handle some tasks that Support employees had done previously, saying the technology had helped to "minimize toil, help us be more efficient and improve merchant experience." In 2024, company leaders told employees a reorg of the division would be necessary to fix its ratio of managers to "crafters," which is Shopify's term for individual contributors.Shopify has also continued to hire third-party vendors some in other countries including the Philippines and some in Canada to assist with customer-service tickets, which employees said has contributed to a decline in overall quality in response.The Support division has also seen a lot of turnover in its management ranks, with former leaders Glen Worthington, Clovis Cuqui, and Jen Bebb all departing Shopify in 2024.Shopify conducted two rounds of mass layoffs in the years after a pandemic-led boom. In July 2022, it laid off 10% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 employees, and in May 2023, it cut an additional 20% of staff while also selling off its logistics business.Three people told BI that the company has quietly laid off workers several times since then, following a similar format as this week's layoffs.Got a tip? Contact this reporter at mstone@businessinsider.com, mlstone@protonmail.com, or on the secure messaging app Signal at @mlstone.04 using a non-work phone.Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via email at jmann@businessinsider.com or via Signal at jyotimann.11. Reach out via a nonwork device.

The House is going to have it's own DOGE subcommittee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene.The Democrats on this committee aren't DOGE-curious. They're gearing up for a fight.The top Democrat says Republicans want to turn the government into a "piggy bank" for Elon Musk.As the Department of Government Efficiency has taken shape, you may have heard about a handful of Democratic politicians who are interested in working with Elon Musk.You won't find any of these "DOGE-curious" Democrats, however, on the House's new "Delivering on Government Efficiency" subcommittee."We believe that they're going to use the DOGE subcommittee to eviscerate the federal workforce," Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the panel, said on CNN on Friday.The subcommittee, housed beneath the House Oversight Committee, will be chaired by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene the controversial Georgia congresswoman who was barred from serving on committees altogether during her first two years in office.Other Republicans on the panel include some of the party's biggest spending hawks and members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, including:Rep. Pat Fallon of TexasRep. William Timmons of South CarolinaRep. Brandon Gill of TexasRep. Brian Jack of GeorgiaRep. Tim Burchett of TennesseeRep. Eric Burlison of MissouriRep. Michael Cloud of TexasThe Democrats, meanwhile, include several lawmakers who've cut their teeth doing battle with Republicans on the Oversight committee over the last two years, including:Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, DCRep. Stephen Lynch of MassachusettsRep. Robert Garcia of CaliforniaRep. Greg Casar of TexasRep. Jasmine Crockett of TexasThese Democrats have generally been critical of DOGE. Stansbury said on CNN that Republicans want to make the federal government "essentially a personal piggy bank for Elon Musk," pointing to the billionaire businessman's reliance on federal contracts. Casar, meanwhile, previously told BI that he expects Musk and DOGE to pursue "really awful, stupid, self-serving stuff.""We're ready to fight back on day one, call out attempts to slash our social safety, and make sure we take care of working families and the middle class," Garcia said in a statement announcing his placement on the subcommittee.While the subcommittee is focusing on the same government-efficiency goals as Musk's DOGE in the executive branch, it remains unclear how the two entities will interact.Meanwhile, lawmakers are pursuing DOGE-aligned initiatives through other avenues, including via DOGE caucuses in both the House and the Senate.

Many Instagram users this week had their scrolling interrupted by the bearded visage of our newly elected Vice President JD Vance. Suddenly it seemed that on the week of their inauguration, everybody on the app was following or being suggested to follow the official accounts of President Donald Trump and Vance (@POTUS and @VP, respectively). Chaos ensued. In group chats, on Instagram Stories, on X and Bluesky, people frantically wondered what was up. Some, like pop stars Gracie Abrams and Demi Lovato, said that when they tried to unfollow the VP and POTUS accounts, the app wouldnt let them until they attempted multiple times. Other hashtags appeared to be banned or hidden, like #jan6 or #democrat. Meta, meanwhile, has been busy assuring users that nothing new or weird is going on here. The accounts for the POTUS and VP, including their followers, were automatically handed over to the new administration as is customary during a presidential transition, while the accounts for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris previously under those usernames would be duplicated in an archive account. Theyve said it may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through but did not provide details when asked by the New York Times why that might be. Hashtags like #democrat were hidden, Meta said, due to an error that affected many hashtags, not just left-leaning ones (those hashtags are now visible). The episode came just weeks after Meta, Instagram and Facebooks parent company, announced sweeping changes to the platforms: CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would be firing Metas fact-checkers and relaxing standards for moderating posts in an effort to prevent bias and censorship a move that was widely read as an attempt to curry favor with the Trump administration. Since 2018, Instagram and Facebook have deprioritized political and news content; now, it plans to bring these topics back to the forefront of users feeds.Metas assurances that they are not boosting certain accounts or censoring others, and that these issues are no more than glitches may very well be true. But due to the secretive, black box nature of algorithms like Metas, its very hard to fact-check such claims. Jillian York, author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism, says that Meta has a long history of censorship. We should not take Meta at their word for anything, she says. Theres a history of Meta saying, This is a glitch, and what they really mean is internal bias, human error, or AI error. Its unclear at this point which were talking about.For years, Republicans have believed that social media companies were inherently biased against conservative speech, despite evidence to the contrary. (More news influencers lean conservative, and most are male.) Now with a new Trump administration in power, its liberals who are expressing concern and their fears, watchdogs say, are more reasonable than they might initially seem. People worried about how Silicon Valley tycoons are kowtowing to Trump need not look far for an example of what conservative control of a platform might look like. We saw this happen with X after Musk took over. My feed was completely different, and I think thats possible with Meta too, says York. Twitter was famous for its searchability, its transparency (you could see exactly who follows who, who liked what, what time a tweet was posted, and what was trending), and its allowance for free speech relative to other platforms. We should not take Meta at their word for anything.But under Musk, who describes himself as a free speech absolutist, censorship on X has gotten worse, not better. He banned links to competitor websites like Instagram and Substack, and admitted that X throttles posts that include any links at all, preventing users from accessing the kind of substantial, quality information found in news articles. He downranked tweets about Ukraine and appeared to limit views of posts that included words like transgender, gay, and bisexual while allowing slurs for gay people to go unchecked. He dissolved the companys Trust and Safety Council and boosted his own tweets so that they became inescapable for any user, regardless of whether they followed him. Just like Musk pulled certain levers to make X a friendlier place for hate speech, spam, and AI slop, so too can any other platform. They can deprioritize links to certain websites (or any websites at all) so that posts that include them will receive fewer views. They can amplify hatred against minority groups while banning speech critical of the established order (for instance, under Metas new rules, writing white people have mental illness is prohibited on Facebook, while gay people have mental illness is allowed). They can, in theory, throttle users they deem problematic so that their posts dont spread while boosting those who are sympathetic to their own interests. Platforms can also limit transparency, as was the case when Meta got rid of CrowdTangle, the tool that allowed researchers and journalists to track whats trending, how information spreads, and which accounts are driving it. TikTok, too, quietly killed its feature that allowed people to see how many views videos containing certain hashtags received. The move came after accusations that TikTok was boosting pro-Palestinian content due to the popularity of pro-Palestine hashtags, even though no evidence ever emerged that that was true. All of the major platforms already filter sensitive topics (why else would so many people be using algospeak, like seggs or unalive?). Theres nothing stopping them from continuing to bury whatever they deem fit; several rights watch organizations have warned that Facebook and Instagram routinely censored pro-Palestine content. On TikTok, many users complained that their algorithms seemed to lean more conservative after the app was offline in the US for several hours, then reinstated, perhaps a reflection of a shift in the user base that has been underway for months. The app welcomed users back with an announcement that explicitly thanked Donald Trump, a rare move for a tech company. During the weekends inaugural events, TikTok sponsored a party celebrating the top 30 conservative influencers who helped secure Trump the election. In the days afterward, TikTok users claimed they couldnt search for terms like fascism or comment free Palestine. Though TikTok has denied that it is censoring this content, the problem is the same as it is with Meta: No one can be absolutely sure the company isnt lying, and its no wonder people are suspicious. Internet users fear more than just the erosion of trust in their social platforms: AI has made Google Search barely useable, filled Amazon, Etsy, and other storefronts with junk, populated social media with bots, and regurgitated misinformation to the millions of people who use tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. Humans have never spent more time online, but the spaces were in often make us mistrust everyone we interact with and everything were told. Despite the backlash against the rightward swing of the major platforms, its curious that there isnt a larger mass movement away from them. As Politicos Derek Robertson wrote in Liberties Journal, so many of us feel like were hurtling toward a dystopian technocracy where human life and connection are continually degraded and devalued, and yet, Why has a popular movement for technological self-governance failed to coalesce something akin to the political movement inspired by the urbanist Jane Jacobs? Why, to return to our original question, dont people care?Its clear that people do care, but perhaps they feel as though their concerns wont be heard unless theyre on the same platforms as everybody else, or that the platforms theyre on will morph into something unrecognizable. Perhaps were all just burnt out by the thought of building a presence on yet another new app one that could, like all the others before it, only disappoint us in the end.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

The Switch 2 era is here (Nintendo)Nintendos new console has been officially revealed, and some retailers are already offering a heads-up on pre-orders.The reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2 may have been undercut by leaks, but it hasnt dampened peoples excitement for the next gen console.Nintendos reveal trailer has already proven to be a big hit on YouTube, while game developers are enthusiastic about the systems capabilities, including the bigger Joy-Cons, mouse-like functionality, and improved graphics.As with any new console though, anyone hoping to get one at launch will have topre-order, but thats easier said than done at the moment.How do you pre-order the Nintendo Switch 2?At the time of writing (January 24), the Switch 2 isnt available to pre-order in the UK. You can register your interest through certain UK retailers though, specifically Currys, ShopTo, and The Game Collection.While registering doesnt guarantee a console, it means youll get updates about the Switch 2, including when pre-orders go live so youll get a head start on everyone else. Think of it as a pre-order of a pre-order.Alternatively, you can also register on Nintendos website for the chance to play the Switch 2 early in London. This randomly selected draw, however, closes on Sunday, January 26.When will Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders go live?Nintendo has not announced a date for pre-orders, but its very likely they will go live either on or just after April 2, 2024.On that day, Nintendo will showcase the console and its games in a Nintendo Direct presentation, where its expected to announce the launch date, price, and more games beyond just the new Mario Kart.What is the UK price of the Nintendo Switch 2?Nintendo is expected to announce the price during the Switch 2s Direct presentation in April, but analysts predict it will be roughly $400 in the US. This would put the UK price somewhere around the 349.99 to 399.99 range.More TrendingOther insiders, like Shpeshal_Nick on X, have claimed it could be priced higher at $449, but it will be above 309.99 at least, which is the current UK price for the Switch OLED Model. Nintendos next console is almost upon us (YouTube)Emailgamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below,follow us on Twitter, andsign-up to our newsletter.To submit Inbox letters and Readers Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use ourSubmit Stuff page here.For more stories like this,check our Gaming page.GameCentralSign up for exclusive analysis, latest releases, and bonus community content.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy