The Morning After: Samsung’s latest software update was bricking older Galaxy phones
I’d be cautious with your software updates if you’ve got a Galaxy phone with a 2019 vintage. An update rolling out from Samsung is reportedly bricking devices from the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note 10 series of phones. 9to5Google reported some users had the same issue with Galaxy M51 and A90 models. The Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ are five years old, running Android 12 and circling an age where they may not support updates.
Affected devices were apparently trapped in a bootloop and could not fully turn back on. Don’t factory reset your device, though, as you’ll lose data.
Was this a dark plot to force you to buy a new Galaxy foldable? No. Samsung has now pulled the update and shared a newer version (2.2.03.1) without the issue — make sure you check that update number.
— Mat Smith
The biggest stories you might have missed
LG C4 OLED smart TVs hit record-low prices ahead of Prime Day
MyRow took my Concept2 rower and made it smart
Tesla’s fifth Cybertruck recall is due to a rear-view camera glitch
Texas is suing TikTok for allegedly violating its new child privacy law
The lawsuit comes barely a month after the state enacted the law.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against TikTok, claiming the company violated a new child privacy law in the state. It’ll be the first test of Texas’ Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act. It requires social media platforms to verify the ages of younger users and offer parental control features, including the ability for parents to opt their children out of data collection.
Paxton alleges TikTok’s existing parental control features are insufficient, lacking “parental tools that allow them to control or limit most of a known minor’s privacy and account settings.”
YouTube Shorts are getting longer
The update will triple the length to three minutes.
Starting on October 15, YouTube is increasing Shorts video limits from one to three minutes. For reference, TikTok, arguably its biggest competitor, has allowed users to share 10-minute videos for over two years. The company is working on letting you pull clips from across YouTube through the Shorts camera and make remix clips. If Shorts aren’t your thing, it will also be easier to skip them as YouTube is introducing a tool to show fewer Shorts, although this is only temporary.
NASA’s latest supernova image could tell us how fast the universe is expanding
The James Webb Space Telescope captured the image.
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a supernova three times, at three different periods during its explosion, in one image. The image could help scientists better understand how fast the universe is expanding. One image, above, captures a streak of light with three distinct dots that appear brighter than the rest of it. As Dr Brenda Frye from the University of Arizona explained, those dots correspond to an exploding white dwarf star. It is also gravitationally lensed — there’s a cluster of galaxies between here and the star, which bent the supernova’s light into multiple images.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-112437965.html?src=rss
