Nolan Arenado faced another opt-out decision this offseason, but just like last year, the star third baseman has decided to remain in St. Louis. Katie Woo of The Athletic reports that Arenado has informed the Cardinals he won’t exercise the opt-out clause in his contract, and he’ll now remain with the Cards and earn $144MM over the final five years of the deal.
Since Arenado’s 2021 numbers were a bit below his usual standard (.255/.312/.494 in 653 PA), passing on the opt-out last year wasn’t too shocking, yet there was some expectation that Arenado might be tempted to test the market coming off a better platform year. The third baseman put himself into the MVP conversation in 2022 by hitting .293/.358/.533 with 30 home runs in 620 plate appearances, and he is again a Gold Glove finalist as he looks to win his 10th consecutive award.
Arenado turns 32 in April, potentially limiting his odds of adding much in the way of years to his current pact. However, it’s easy to see how he could have surpassed his current $28.8MM average annual value. Notably, fellow third baseman Anthony Rendon managed to secure an AAV of $35MM in his seven year/$245MM contract he signed with the Angels prior to the 2020 season, while Freddie Freeman’s six year, $162MM pact with the Dodgers last winter exceeds Arenado’s current deal in terms of both years and total value.
That said, Arenado’s $144MM is hardly a minor sum, and he has often spoke about his comfort level in St. Louis and his desire to remain a long-term piece of the Cardinals’ future. With this stability already in place, Arenado chose to pass on free agency, and he can now focus entirely on 2023 without the extra drama and uncertainty that follows even the names on the open market.
With Arenado’s decision now made, the Cards have checked another major task off their offseason to-do list, a few days after re-signing Adam Wainwright for the 2023 season. The Cardinals are expected to have significant room to make additions to their payroll this season, and not having to allocate additional resources to retaining Arenado should allow St. Louis to do more to address other areas of the roster. The starting rotation and outfield are possible target areas, as well as the obvious step of finding a catcher to replace retiring franchise stalwart Yadier Molina.
As The Athletic’s Nick Groke mentions, Arenado’s decision also keeps the Rockies committed to a significant financial obligation. As per the terms of the trade that sent Arenado from Colorado to St. Louis prior to the 2021 season, the Rockies owe the Cardinals $31.5MM to cover a portion of the third baseman’s salary — $16MM next season, and then $5MM each year from 2024 to 2026. The $16MM slated for Arenado is more than the Rockies are paying any player on their 2023 payroll, except for Kris Bryant.
In a rare occurrence this week, Apple provided a tangible clue about the iPhone’s future. Company executives confirmed that Apple will comply with the European Union’s mandate that all phones in the region adopt USB-C as the common smartphone charging port in 2024. This means that future iPhones will need to shift away from the Lightning connector that’s existed since 2012.
The transition to USB-C seems inevitable for the iPhone given the EU’s new requirements. Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, speaking at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference, said that the company has “no choice” and that Apple would “comply with local laws” as it does around the world. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the Lightning cable is becoming extinct just yet. The Lightning port may play a bigger role in Apple’s lineup than you might expect, thanks to the multitude of accessories that still use it and the popularity of older iPhones.
It’s no secret that USB-C has become increasingly common on Apple products. It’s present on every iPad in the company’s current portfolio except for the ninth-generation iPad from 2021. You’ll find USB-C ports on Apple’s MacBook Pro and Air lineup as well.
But consumers and tech critics alike have been waiting for USB-C to arrive on the iPhone. An iPhone X that had been modified with a USB-C port even sold for $86,001 on eBay last year. After all, why wouldn’t you want to use the same cord to charge your iPhone, iPad and Mac? The EU’s new mandate represents a step toward a simpler charging experience in the long term. Yet there’s also a chance the transition period could cause some friction as consumers potentially bounce between chargers to power new iPhones alongside legacy accessories.
There are a handful of products that require a Lightning connection for wired charging, aside from the iPhone. Such devices include AirPods earbuds, the AirPods Max, the first-generation Apple Pencil (which is oddly the only model that works with the new USB-C-equipped iPad), the Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad and Magic Keyboard. That means owners of these devices might still find themselves swapping cables if they purchase an iPhone with USB-C in the future.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to CNET’s request for comment regarding whether it plans to retain the Lightning port on future versions of these products.
It’s also important to remember that not every iPhone shopper opts for the newest model. Apple often discounts older versions once a new iPhone arrives. Take its current lineup, for example, which still includes last year’s iPhone 13 and 2020’s iPhone 12. Apple also kept the iPhone 11 in the lineup at a lower price of $499 after introducing the iPhone 13 in September 2021. If Apple maintains that tradition, there will likely still be some Lightning-powered iPhones in its 2023 lineup too.
Even though many shoppers may flock to the newest iPhone, there’s a considerable market for older iPhones. The iPhone 11 was the fifth best-selling smartphone in 2021 even though it launched in 2019, according to Counterpoint Research. Sales of the iPhone 11, iPhone SE and 4-year-old iPhone XR accounted for 15% of US iPhone sales in the March 2022 quarter, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.
Refurbished iPhones are also popular, with Apple accounting for more than 40% of the global market for secondary phones, according to a separate Counterpoint Research report. Considering all iPhones since 2012 charge through Lightning, it’s safe to say that those purchasing refurbished models in the future will want to hang on to their Lightning cables. That’s particularly relevant considering demand for refurbished phones increased 15% in 2021 as customers looked to avoid high prices and make more sustainable buying decisions, Counterpoint also reported.
People may also be inclined to hold onto their current phones for longer as inflation cuts into other daily expenses. Global smartphone shipments are expected to decline 6.5% in 2022 as inflation has weakened demand, according to the International Data Corporation. The average age of traded-in smartphones has also reached 3.5 years for the first time, according to Assurant, an insurance provider that also helps companies develop device trade-in programs. The more legacy iPhones remain in use, the more Lightning cables will remain in circulation.
Over the long term, the move to USB-C will be an improvement for iPhone owners. The change will make it possible to charge most recent iPads, Macs and eventually iPhones with a single cable – which is precisely why the EU made USB-C mandatory in the first place. The switch also comes at an ideal time considering iPhones are becoming less reliant on wired connections thanks to improvements in wireless charging, the increased popularity of Bluetooth accessories and Apple’s new MagSafe connection system.
But transitions like these take time. And there are still many unanswered questions about how Apple will comply with the EU’s decision. For example, we don’t know whether Apple will make the switch to USB-C in 2023 or if it will wait until 2024. We don’t know if Apple will use USB-C specifically for European iPhones or if it will become the standard globally.
What does seem clear, however, is that the arrival of a USB-C iPhone may be a step toward using one universal cable for everything. But it won’t happen overnight.
Advertisers are concerned about the billionaire’s plans to soften content moderation and what they say are potential conflicts of interest in auto advertising, given that he is chief executive of
Tesla Inc.,
say people familiar with the situation.
Mr. Musk said this spring that as owner of Twitter he would reinstate former President
Donald Trump’s
account, which the platform suspended indefinitely after linking Mr. Trump’s comments to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. That would be a red line for some brands, said Kieley Taylor, global head of partnerships at GroupM, a leading ad-buying agency that represents blue-chip brands.
About a dozen of GroupM’s clients, which own an array of well-known consumer brands, have told the agency to pause all their ads on Twitter if Mr. Trump’s account is reinstated, Ms. Taylor said. Others are in wait-and-see mode. Ms. Taylor said she expects to hear from many more clients if Mr. Trump’s account returns.
“That doesn’t mean that we won’t be entertaining lots of emails and phone calls as soon as a transaction goes through,” Ms. Taylor said. “I anticipate we’ll be busy.”
In a message to advertisers on Twitter on Thursday, Mr. Musk said he was buying the company to “have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He said Twitter “cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Mr. Musk said in addition to following laws, Twitter must be “warm and welcoming to all.”
He said Twitter aims to be a platform that “strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”
Twitter’s chief customer officer, Sarah Personette, tweeted that she had a discussion with Mr. Musk on Wednesday evening. “Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged,” she wrote. “Looking forward to the future!”
Mr. Trump has said he wouldn’t rejoin Twitter even if allowed. Representatives for Tesla and Mr. Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Musk has completed the acquisition of Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter, after a monthslong legal battle in which he tried to back out of the $44 billion deal he agreed to in April. The judge overseeing the legal fight had said if the deal didn’t close by Friday she would schedule a November trial.
Twitter sent an email to some ad buyers earlier this week letting them know that the company is working with “the buyer” to close the acquisition by Friday and to acknowledge that Twitter is aware that advertisers have a lot of questions, according to the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The email, which didn’t name Mr. Musk, said Twitter would work “with the potential buyer to answer quickly.”
Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue in 2021. Mr. Musk has said he hates advertising. In a series of tweets earlier this year, he suggested Twitter should move toward subscriptions and remove ads from Twitter Blue, a premium program that gives users additional features.
Twitter will become a private company if Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid is approved. The move would allow Musk to make changes to the site. WSJ’s Dan Gallagher explains Musk’s proposed changes and the challenges he might face enacting them. Illustration: Jordan Kranse
Mr. Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has said Twitter should be more cautious about removing tweets or banning users.
Mr. Musk may have reasons to avoid any drastic changes to Twitter’s ad business. Twitter will take on $13 billion in debt in the deal. The online-ad markets already are shaky, amid concerns about the economy, with
Snap Inc.
and
Alphabet Inc.
posting lower-than-expected revenue results for the September quarter.
Like other ad-supported social-media platforms, Twitter provides advertisers with adjacency controls, tools that are meant to ensure ads don’t appear next to certain content the brands deem objectionable.
Ask WSJ
The Musk-Twitter Deal
WSJ Financial Editor Charles Forelle sits down with Alexa Corse, WSJ reporter covering Twitter, at 1 p.m. ET Oct. 28 to discuss Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. What does the future hold for the platform? And what does this deal mean for Mr. Musk’s business empire?
Some ad buyers said Twitter lags behind its competitors in providing so-called brand safety features. Joshua Lowcock, global chief media officer at UM Worldwide, an ad agency owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., called Twitter’s adjacency controls inadequate and “poorly thought through.”
Ad agency
Omnicom Media Group
evaluates the major social-media platforms’ progress on brand-safety tools every quarter. In July, Omnicom rated Twitter’s progress behind that of YouTube,
Facebook,
Instagram, TikTok and Reddit, according to a document reviewed by the Journal. Robert Pearsall, managing director of social activation at Omnicom Media Group, said Twitter has made agreements to improve its brand-safety controls to meet Omnicom’s standards, but it hasn’t introduced those changes to the market yet.
“There are significant concerns about the implications of a possible change to content moderation policy,” he said. Twitter has said it is working on tools to give advertisers a better idea of where their ads appear.
Advertising provided 89% of Twitter’s $5.08 billion revenue last year.
Photo:
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Automotive manufacturers have expressed concerns about advertising on Twitter under Mr. Musk’s ownership, given his role at electric-vehicle juggernaut Tesla, some ad buyers said. Advertisers often share data with Twitter and other platforms—on their own customers or people that are in the market for a car—to help target their ads at the right people. Some auto companies will be wary of doing so, out of concern that data may leak to Tesla, the buyers said.
Though Twitter relies on ad dollars, it isn’t one of the biggest players in the digital-ad economy. The company gets about 1.1% of U.S. digital-ad spending, according to Insider Intelligence, a much smaller slice than Google, Meta Platforms Inc. or
Amazon.com Inc.
Already, there have been signs of anxiety on Madison Avenue about Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter. In July, the company reported a 1% decrease in second-quarter revenue, which it blamed on uncertainty over the deal as well as broader pressures in the digital ad market.
Given Mr. Musk’s past remarks on advertising, some advertisers wonder if Mr. Musk may exit the ad business entirely.
“The question we keep getting asked is: Do we think Musk will turn off ads completely?” said UM Worldwide’s Mr. Lowcock.
Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com
A federal court on Thursday cleared the way for Donald Trump’s records to be handed over to Democratic lawmakers.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to reconsider an August ruling from three judges that gave a House committee the right to Trump’s tax returns for 2015 to 2020. The former president can still challenge the decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, but the appeals court declined a request from Trump to automatically hold the release of records pending that challenge.
The House Ways & Means Committee sought the records in 2019, saying they would inform legislation to improve the way presidents are audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Under Trump, the Treasury Department refused to hand over the documents; under President Biden, Trump sued to bar the agency from doing so. He argued the lawmakers’ true purpose was political. But the appeals panel agreed with a lower court that lawmakers had “a legitimate legislative purpose” in examining the records, which was to assess whether the current audit system is sufficient.
“It is not our place to delve deeper than this,” the appeals panel wrote. “The mere fact that individual members of Congress may have political motivations as well as legislative ones is of no moment.”
The original order from the court said a mandate to release the returns would be issued a week after all issues were resolved.
Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), said in a statement that “the law has always been on our side.”
“Former President Trump has tried to delay the inevitable, but once again, the Court has affirmed the strength of our position,” the statement said. “We’ve waited long enough—we must begin our oversight of the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program as soon as possible.”
Trump broke with other major presidential nominees in refusing to release his tax returns during the campaign and while in office declined to divest himself of business holdings that profited from both the federal government and foreign powers. In a separate lawsuit, the House Oversight Committee also sought financial records from Trump’s accounting firm, which made a deal to hand material over in September.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Raising the stakes on its extraordinary subpoena to Donald Trump, the House committee investigating the Capitol riot indicated Sunday it would not consider letting the former president testify live on television about the direct role that congressional investigators say he played in trying to overturn the 2020 election.
The committee is demanding Trump’s testimony under oath next month as well as records relevant to its investigation. To avoid a complicated and protracted legal battle, Trump reportedly had told associates he might consider complying with the subpoena if he could answer questions during live testimony.
But Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, on Sunday rejected the possibility. She said the committee, which makes its major decisions with unanimous consent, would not allow Trump’s testimony to turn into a “food fight” on TV and she warned that the committee will take action if he does not comply with the subpoena.
“We are going to proceed in terms of the questioning of the former president under oath,” Cheney, R-Wyo., said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves. We are not going to allow — he’s not going to turn this into a circus.”
“We have many, many alternatives that we will consider if the former president decides he is not going to comply with his legal obligation, a legal obligation every American citizen has to comply with a subpoena,” she said.
It is unclear how Trump and his legal team will ultimately respond. He could comply or negotiate with the committee, announce he will defy the subpoena or ignore it altogether. He could go to court and try to stop it.
Still, there remains little legal advantage for Trump to cooperate with the committee at a time when he faces other legal battles in various jurisdictions, including over his family business in New York and the handling of presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
It’s possible his lawyers could simply run out the clock on the subpoena if they go to court to try to squash it as the committee of two Republicans and seven Democrats is required to finish its work by the end of the year.
Cheney, in the television interview, made her position clear that Trump had committed “multiple criminal offenses” and should be prosecuted. She cited his repeated efforts as outlined by the Jan. 6 committee to undermine democracy by denying his election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and by spurring his supporters in the violent attack on the Capitol.
“We’ve been very clear about a number of different criminal offenses that are likely at issue here,” Cheney said. “If the Department of Justice determines that they have the evidence that we believe is there and they make a decision not to prosecute, I think that really calls into question whether or not we’re a nation of laws.”
Cheney, who lost in Wyoming’s August primary after becoming Trump’s fiercest GOP critic, expressed dismay over the number of Republican candidates in the Nov. 8 midterms who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. She acknowledged that the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation will be permanently ended in January if Republicans retake control of the House.
While saying it may take “a couple of election cycles,” Cheney insisted the Republican Party can find its way back as a defender of democracy and the Constitution, as she put it. She pointed to the 2024 presidential campaign as a pivotal moment.
“I think that the party has either got to come back from where we are right now, which is a very dangerous, toxic place, or the party will splinter and there will be a new conservative party that rises,” she said. “And if Donald Trump is the nominee of the Republican Party, the party will shatter and there will be a conservative party that rises in its place.”
She said Trump has shown “his willingness to use force to attempt to stop the peaceful transition of power. And there are simply many, many millions more Americans who, despite any party affiliation, understand how dangerous that is.”
___
For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to https://www.apnews.com/capitol-siege
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Frustrated New York Jets wide receiver Elijah Moore, who requested a trade Thursday after being sent home following a blow-up with a coach, returned to the team’s facility Friday but will be inactive Sunday against the Denver Broncos.
“To ask him to play a football game with where he is from a mental standpoint wouldn’t be fair to him, in my opinion,” coach Robert Saleh told reporters. “But that’s strictly my decision.”
Saleh said the Jets won’t grant Moore’s trade request, saying they hope to work out their differences once the second-year receiver rejoins the team. He was excused from meetings and practice Friday and won’t make the trip to Denver. He will remain in New Jersey, working out with the conditioning staff as if he were injured.
“It’s part of what we deal with every day,” Saleh said. “We’ve had our discussions with Elijah. Trading him is not an option. We’ll just continue working with him.”
The NFL trade deadline is Nov. 1.
Saleh, who said Thursday that Moore was given a personal day to deal with a family matter, confirmed reports that Moore was told to leave the facility before practice due to a disagreement with the coaches.
A source told ESPN that it was a heated exchange with offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur.
“Like everything, it gets to a boiling point,” Saleh said Friday. “He showed displeasure. It was one of those deals where it was just best for him to just relax, calm down, take a day, catch your breath and we’ll reconvene at another time.”
The controversy comes at an odd time because the Jets (4-2), winners of three straight, have their best start since 2015. But Moore, a 2021 second-round pick who showed promise as a rookie, is upset about his usage. An every-down player, he’s sixth on the team in receptions (16) and fifth in targets (28).
Moore went public with his feelings Sunday after the Jets upset the Green Bay Packers — a game in which he had no official targets. He tweeted, “I don’t understand” about why he wasn’t a bigger part of the offense.
Referring to the tweet, Saleh issued a mild public rebuke Monday, saying “mistakes happen.” He defended Moore’s character, and did so again Friday, downplaying the repercussions of the trade request and the perception that Moore is a selfish player.
Saleh chalked it up to Moore’s competitiveness, calling it an “admirable” trait.
“He wants more,” Saleh said. “That doesn’t make him selfish. In my mind, it makes him a competitor.”
To replace Moore on Sunday, the Jets will activate wide receiver Denzel Mims for the first time. Mims, a 2020 second-round pick who requested a trade in the preseason, was a healthy scratch for the first six games. Mims and Jeff Smith likely will share Moore’s reps in the game.
Kelly Ripa has found the silver lining to end all silver linings. The soap actor and talk show host recently released her memoir, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, and took the highest of roads when she found out fellow TV doyenne Kathie Lee Gifford won’t be reading it.
“I am a person that tends to take a negative and turn it into a positive,” Ripa said on a recent episode of the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, per People. Ripa replaced Gifford on Live! in 2001 as Regis Philbin’s co-host; in her memoir, per Page Six, Ripa said that Philbin referred to her as “it” on set. She added that they were not friends outside of work.
Reacting to headlines about Ripa’s characterization of her and Philbin’s realtionship, Gifford said, “I went, ‘I hope this isn’t true. I just hope it isn’t.’ Because what’s the point? I don’t get it. I don’t get it.”
Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford on the set of *Live with Regis and Kathie Lee*.
Newsday LLC/Getty Images
As for Ripa, she sees any brouhaha as free publicity. “It’s really hard to sell a book, right? And this is like, week three of the book, right? And I mean, honestly, I’m not gonna lie, I was not reading any headlines anywhere. And suddenly all of these headlines pop up and there’s all of this attention on my book,” she said of the dust-up around Gifford. “So I am a person that tends to take a negative and turn it into a positive. And so my ultimate comment is, thank you.”
Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa speak to the audience during a broadcast of *Live with Regis and Kelly.*
Spencer Platt
“It’s like really hard to get attention on a book that’s been out for a couple of weeks and now it’s week two, second week on The New York Times Best Sellers list. It’s like, thank you, because I think that people that read the book will have a very different take on the book,” she added.
Kelly Ripa also added an aphorism that, frankly, I think we should all use when people get snobby or uppity or otherwise precious about their reading materials: “You don’t have to read every book. Nobody has to read every book on Earth.” That’s true!
Photo: Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Silk Sonic won’t be leaving the door open to more Grammy wins this year. The duo of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak declined to submit their album An Evening With Silk Sonic to the Grammys, Mars told Rolling Stone. “Silk Sonic would like to gracefully, humbly and most importantly, sexually, bow out of submitting our album this year,” he said in a statement. Last year, Silk Sonic surprised with the most wins of the night — four including Record and Song of the Year — for their single “Leave the Door Open.” Those wins set An Evening With up as a top contender in a crowded Album of the Year field, which is expected to include Beyoncé (Renaissance), Adele (30), and Kendrick Lamar (Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers). The duo could have earned a few more song nominations too, likely for the single “Smokin Out the Window.” (An Evening With was released in November 2021, which qualifies for the current Grammys cycle.) “We’d be crazy to ask for anything more,” Mars said, adding that the trophies for “Leave the Door Open” were “icing on the cake” to their success. After Silk Sonic’s wins last year, Mars tied the record for most Record of the Year wins by a performer at three (alongside “Uptown Funk!” and “24K Magic”), and he has a past Album of the Year win for 24K Magic.
They aren’t the first musicians to withdraw from the Grammys, but they are the rare case of artists doing it for a positive reason. The Weeknd is boycotting the awards after being snubbed for “Blinding Lights” and After Hours in 2021 and criticizing the since-disbanded “secret committees”; he could’ve been a top contender this year for Dawn FM. Drake, who previously criticized the awards, also withdrew from competition last year after his two nominations were already announced. Pitchfork has since reported that he did not submit his album Honestly, Nevermind for 2023 consideration. Now, with this year set to relitigate past controversies like Adele’s win over Beyoncé for 25 and Taylor Swift’s win over Lamar for 1989, could more artists be set to follow Silk Sonic’s steps? Maybe chief Beyhive member Adele?
This story has been updated with additional information.
“Saturday Night Live” opened its show this week by testing the temperament of contestants being read news headlines on a game show called “So You Think You Won’t Snap!”
“Have you noticed that everyone around you is angry and crazy? People are flipping out at Target, stabbing is back and the only thing that can cheer us up is watching a sexy show about Jeffrey Dahmer,” host Morgan Freegirl, played by Bowen Yang, said, referencing a duo of recent Netflix true crime shows, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” and “Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes.”
“We are living on the edge, and tonight I’m here to push us over as we play ‘So You Think You Won’t Snap!’” Bowen’s Freegirl says.
The fictional game show gathered a group of contestants it called “the only people in America who have not yet snapped.”
One of the contestants, Kayla, played by Chloe Fineman, is a mom who says she’s pickleball curious. She tells Freegirl she has four children and doesn’t have time to worry about anything else.
Kayla is then read a series of headlines involving Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker and a study that found “86% of kids today say that when they grow up, their dream job is influencer.”
Growing more agitated, Fineman’s Kayla says, “That sounds dumb, but my kids are into video games.”
Yang’s Freegirl then shows a clip of the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” trailer released this week that featured Chris Pratt voicing the game’s iconic Italian plumber Mario.
“He’s supposed to be Italian! That’s like his whole thing,” Kayla exclaims after hearing Pratt’s performance. She then snaps and hits a flight attendant who was standing nearby.
The next contestant is Dale, played by Kenan Thompson who is positioned in front of a table of things he can easily sweep on the ground. Yang’s Freegirl begins by saying, “This week, Elon Musk…” before he is interrupted by Dale screaming and sweeping all the breakable items off the table. “That man needs to shut his mouth!” Thompson’s Dale yells.
After sending another contestant over the edge with headlines about Kanye West’s recent fashion show, during which he dressed himself and several Black models in shirts reading “White Lives Matter,” Yang’s Freegirl teased, “When we come back, we’ll show an 80-year-old man an episode of ‘Euphoria.’”
The cast of the sketch then came together for the show’s signature catch phrase, “Live… from New York. It’s Saturday Night!”
Reuters reports that even Google isn’t ready to pronounce Face Unlock secure enough to authenticate mobile payments. So only the under-display fingerprint scanner will be able to verify the identity of a Pixel 7 series user checking out of a store using Google Pay. Google doesn’t consider its facial recognition system secure enough to allow Face Unlock to be used to verify the identity of a Pixel 7 or Pixel 7 Pro user signing into an app using his or her Google Account.
Google says that the Pixel 7 version of Face Unlock is not secure enough to verify mobile payments
Google says that facial recognition needs to allow spoofing to unlock a phone 7% of the time or less for it to be considered secure. Spoofing on the new Face Unlock system will allow someone besides the phone’s owner to unlock the device more than 20% of the time. The Alphabet unit also warns users that Face Unlock can have issues in low light. Because the iPhone uses an infrared camera for Face ID, low-light conditions are not a problem for Apple’s TrueDepth Camera.
This past week Google announced that the Pixel 7 line will have Face Unlock
It should be pointed out that in 2019, the Pixel 4 series had secure Face Unlock using the same components Apple uses with the TrueDepth Camera. But sourcing the parts was much more expensive for Google since much fewer Pixel 4 handsets were produced compared to the number of iPhone units produced.
Face ID on Apple iPhone models started with the iPhone X in 2017 and produces 3D depth maps of users’ faces making it harder to fool facial recognition systems. That’s because, without the depth map, a bad actor could use a photograph of a phone’s owner to unlock a device. We don’t know exactly how Face Unlock works on the Pixel 7 line, but if Google isn’t sold on the idea of allowing its use to confirm mobile payments, it probably is vulnerable to those with malicious intent.
Face Unlock might not be secure but it is still useful
To make sure that a photograph isn’t being used to hack into one of the new Pixel models, Google toyed with the idea of requiring the user to smile, or blink his/her eyes to make Face Unlock more secure as it would show that a live person was in front of the camera. But Google nixed this, according to a Reuters’ source, because it made the Face Unlock process slower.
Pre-order the Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro
So the Face Unlock on the Pixel 7 series is limited to unlocking the Lock Screen only. This doesn’t make it useless. In fact, Face Unlock will still make it easier and faster to unlock your phone than the fingerprint sensor. Personally, after using the iPhone 11 Pro Max for over two years, I often forget to unlock my Pixel with the under-display fingerprint button before tapping on a Lock Screen notification. And that becomes a giant pain in the butt since the phone then asks me to punch in my PIN number which adds extra time.
While this is infuriating when you’re in a rush, it is exactly why having Face Unlock will save time and effort. Despite its “limited” capabilities, I’d still love to see Google add the feature to the Pixel 6 Pro, although that now seems like a pipe dream. Reuters says that the pandemic, which forced many to wear masks, was one of the reasons why the Pixel 6 line did not have Face Unlock.
