theverge--2020-08-28--Prisoners at San Quentin are dying from COVID, and help isn’t coming

When the test came back positive , Quinn* felt like he was getting a second sentence .
“ I believe that they sent COVID here to kill us .
Simple as that , ” he says .
He ’ s a father living at San Quentin State Prison and one of over 2,200 inmates who ’ ve tested positive for COVID-19 .
The correctional facility , located in Northern California , is the center of the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country .
San Quentin was likely a preventable tragedy .
Since March , experts have been warning that prison @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calling on federal judges to release inmates and reduce the size of the prison population .
That happened too late in California .
Instead , the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation ( CDCR ) moved men away from a prison in Chino , which was battling an outbreak , to San Quentin , which was virus-free .
In doing so , they created a second hotspot — one even more deadly than the first .
By July , more than a third of people at San Quentin had the virus , according @ @ @ @ @ @ @ August , 24 inmates were dead .
This doesn ’ t feel like an accident America ’ s failure to stop the virus from spreading in prisons is a key piece of its failure to contain the virus at large .
Tens of thousands of people in prison have tested positive for the virus .
From March through the beginning of June , the number of COVID-19 cases in US prisons grew at a rate of around 8 percent per day , compared to 3 percent in the general population .
Of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country , 19 are in prisons or jails .
To the men at San Quentin , this doesn ’ t feel like an accident .
Speaking to The Verge on contraband cellphones , inmates discussed the systemic failings that led the facility to become a viral epicenter — failings they interpreted as intentional acts of aggression .
While the men are largely cut off from the outside world , information trickles in , and conspiracy theories abound .
One theory , which Quinn believes , is that prison authorities released COVID-19 on purpose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ The governor said they weren ’ t going to execute people on death row anymore .
So they sent the virus here to do what ?
To kill off people on death row , ” he says .
“ They cost more money than anyone else here .
So people like me are getting swept up in the process.
” His concerns may sound merely like rumors , but they reflect a deep-seated mistrust in the institution .
That mistrust is , in many ways , warranted : while CDCR might not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , months of political jockeying and legal fighting slowed the prison ’ s response to the pandemic and directly contributed to the outbreak .
Instead of taking steps that could have kept inmates healthier , the system went down a path that made it easier for them to get sick .
The first inmate in the California prison system tested positive for COVID-19 in March .
Just after the case was reported , Scott Kernan , a former secretary of CDCR , called the prisons a “ tinderbox.
” Then , on March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ motion asking federal judges to order the state to reduce the prison population and release inmates with health conditions that would put them at risk for severe disease .
The system had a critical window to contain the virus , said Marc Stern , a correctional health care consultant and former assistant secretary for health care at the Washington State Department of Corrections , in an expert declaration accompanying the March 25th motion .
“ To be effective in reducing the spread of the virus , these downsizing measures must occur now.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those calls for inmate release .
The state said it had already taken steps to protect people in the prisons from COVID-19 : prisons suspended the intake of new inmates , prevented visitors , and planned to transfer people who lived in riskier , dorm-style housing .
Besides , releasing medically high-risk inmates would put a strain on local health systems , state attorney general Xavier Becerra wrote in court filings in March .
The decision to not let in visitors was hard on inmates , like Quinn , who rely on family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s family sees him when they ’ re able to make the time-consuming trip .
In the past , he tutored his sibling who had trouble with homework , and spoke to his mother and daughter frequently .
Now , he ’ s not sure when he ’ ll see them again .
“ If they ever declare martial law , they ’ re going to gas us ” Since the outbreak started , Quinn has hardly left his cell — a sparse four and a half by ten-foot , eight-inch space that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He rarely has access to a shower .
To try to stay healthy , he ’ s been drinking water and working out , but it ’ s hard with such limited floor space .
Aside from badly chapped lips and a slight fever at the beginning of July , the worst symptom has been crippling anxiety .
When we talk , Quinn tends to discuss why the prison isn ’ t doing more to keep him safe and what might happen if the outbreak doesn ’ t improve .
His cellmate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convinced he ’ s going to die .
He also thinks the prison system is trying to kill him .
The Verge emailed San Quentin twice , and called five times , to request comment for this article .
It did not receive a response .
Information travels quickly in prisons and jails , says Mary Rayne , a former West Virginia prison librarian .
The facilities are news deserts , and any new bit of intel that squeezes in through cellphones or in letters is a valuable commodity .
Anything that feeds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sure to circulate widely .
Rumors that the system is planning to exterminate inmates are familiar , Rayne says .
“ I worked in a prison where my circulation assistant said to me one day , ‘ You know , if they ever declare martial law , they ’ re going to gas us , ’ ” she says .
These types of rumors spread because inmates don ’ t trust the system charged with keeping them healthy , says Craig Haney , a social psychologist and a professor at the University of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Prisoners become accustomed to living in an environment where they feel people don ’ t have their best interests at heart and treat them as if they are not fully full human beings , ” Haney says .
“ It ’ s not at all surprising that prisoners might come to believe that the prison system might have done this.
” From the outside , San Quentin looks like a castle overlooking the San Francisco Bay .
It ’ s the oldest prison in California , the grounds split up in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups of inmates .
The four cell blocks — named North , East , South , West — are five stories high and have roughly 500 cells .
H Unit , which is designed more like a dormitory , is partially reserved for men with documented mental health issues .
Quinn lives in a sparse cell populated by a bunk bed , a toilet , a sink , and a small cabinet .
He gets three meals a day , two of them cold sack lunches that typically consist of a boiled egg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apple and a baloney sandwich .
Dinner — the prison ’ s one hot meal — is cold by the time it ’ s served .
“ The food doesn ’ t get you full , ” Quinn says .
“ It ’ s the same thing over and over.
” In the spring , as part of COVID-19 precautions , staff members on the mental health team selected some men to move from H Unit to North Block , in an effort to create more space .
“ We were forced to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go up there [ to North Block ] , ” a social worker named Erica* tells The Verge .
“ We had to come up with all these names .
None of us wanted any of them to move.
” Erica was unable to continue seeing her patients after the move — the prison was worried about the virus spreading from inmates to staff .
Recently , however , she heard that one of her former patients tested positive for coronavirus in North Block .
The news confirmed a feeling she ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ didn ’ t care about its inmates .
“ Corruption is everywhere , ” she says .
“ These people make decisions and don ’ t care who it affects.
” As inmates in San Quentin were shuffled between buildings , COVID-19 was already spreading through the California Institution for Men ( CIM ) in Chino , over 400 miles away .
The number of inmates testing positive grew steadily through April , and by May 13th , 397 inmates had tested positive .
By May 20th , about 599 had contracted the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inmates had severe enough symptoms that they had to be hospitalized outside the prison .
Six had died , including a 65-year-old man close to parole .
Each of the prison ’ s four facilities had outbreaks .
In one of the dorm-style housing units , where inmates sleep in rows of bunk beds , over 60 percent of the residents had the virus by that point .
The legal battles meant inmates wouldn ’ t be released .
But no one — not the state , the lawyers , or Clark Kelso @ @ @ @ @ @ @ medical care in the prison system — thought it was a good idea to transfer inmates between prisons .
Transfers risked additional outbreaks , the Prison Law Office wrote in May 13th court filings , and should only happen if there ’ s enough testing to ensure that the inmates transferred don ’ t pose a risk to the prison to which they ’ re heading .
The California Correctional Health Care Services ( CCHCS ) agreed , saying that moving inmates risked spreading the virus between prisons .
CDCR wasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of May , the state of California was nevertheless making plans to move about 700 medically vulnerable inmates out of CIM and over to other prisons .
Kelso drew up a strategy described in a May 27th court filing : if the risk of keeping medically high-risk inmates where they were was higher than the risk of transfer , the state would consider moving them .
Every single housing unit in CIM , at that point , had at least one case of COVID-19 .
There was nowhere inside the prison to move @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the secretary for the CDCR determined it was riskier to leave them there than to move them .
“ We asked for releases , and they didn ’ t occur , ” says Don Specter , the executive director of the Prison Law Office .
“ The receiver decided it was worthwhile to try and transfer some folks and get them out of harm ’ s way.
” Some of those high-risk inmates were set to move to San Quentin .
They were supposed to be tested for COVID-19 before they left to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to another outbreak .
CCHCS didn ’ t have guidelines for when people should be tested for the virus before they were transferred .
Many of the negative COVID-19 tests for the 120 men were more than a week old when they were transferred from CIM to San Quentin on May 30th .
By the time buses left CIM , some inmates may have contracted the virus .
Bus drivers and security who worked on the move also weren ’ t tested and may also have been the source of the outbreak .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sure how the virus got into San Quentin , since contact tracing wasn ’ t reported .
There ’ s no evidence to suggest that it happened intentionally , says Brie Williams , a doctor who advised the state on how it should respond to the San Quentin COVID-19 outbreak .
“ That is such a devastating allegation , or rumor , and I don ’ t know anything to suggest that it ’ s true , ” she says .
Williams is also the director of the Criminal Justice & Health Consortium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Francisco .
The transfers happened because attorneys were terrified for their high-risk clients in CIM .
“ They identified people who were older or seriously ill to safeguard their health , ” Williams says .
“ Then things went terribly wrong.
” It didn ’ t feel that way to Quinn .
When he found out about the Chino transfers , it made the monthslong ban on visitors seem pointless , even cruel .
His mother had been forced to cancel a trip she ’ d scheduled for this summer .
“ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you got it or not , ” he says .
“ Knowing they brought 121 men in here , and the numbers are rising every night… ” After the men from Chino arrived , people got sick .
Rumors ran wild .
The prevailing belief — the one echoed by the inmates who spoke to The Verge — was that the outbreak was deliberate .
“ I told the nurses , I think they ’ re trying to kill us , ” Quinn ’ s cellmate says .
“ I don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it out of here.
” When Quinn got tested for COVID-19 , it took him two weeks to get his results .
At the start of summer , the California prison system was struggling with inadequate COVID-19 testing , much like the country at large .
San Quentin had the opportunity to get free coronavirus tests from researchers in the Bay Area but declined the offer .
Results were taking so long that Quinn assumed he ’ d tested negative .
Then he got a letter saying he had the disease .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control The staff had their own theories for why people got sick .
“ I ’ ve never seen anything quite like this where they knew the men were sick and moved them , ” says Erica , the social worker .
“ When you go through all the possibilities — me and all the staff members were talking , it comes down to that .
It must have been on purpose — there ’ s no other explanation.
” Paranoia is always widespread in prisons and among inmates .
“ It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ environment where you can ’ t control things yourself , ” social psychologist Haney says .
The health care inmates get in the best of times is regularly inadequate , and it ’ s maintained by lawsuits , not by what ’ s medically necessary .
The pandemic only exacerbates that tension : inmates are afraid of infection , but there ’ s very little they can do to keep themselves safe .
They can ’ t trust that guards are taking precautions when they ’ re not at work , they can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and they don ’ t have the usual contact with visitors , which makes things feel more stressful .
That environment makes it easy for inmates to feel like the people in charge are intentionally trying to make their lives worse .
They ’ re reluctant to cooperate with health staff , which makes controlling the outbreak more difficult .
Some inmates were wary of getting tested because they didn ’ t trust the medical staff at the facility — they worry that they could be pulled from a familiar cell and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried to move inmates to cells lower in the building , they refused , over fears the virus particles would fall into their cells from above .
“ Dudes cough and sneeze , everything seems to fall , ” Quinn says .
“ If you move me downstairs , below someone who has it , you put me at more risk.
” The outbreak stripped inmates of any sense of control or autonomy they may have been able to hold onto .
“ In this pandemic , where many of us feel like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve lost our ability to control our life , and it ’ s disconcerting and disorienting — it pales in comparison , ” Haney says .
“ There is an undercurrent of helplessness in these environments.
” COVID-19 is still burning through the California prison system .
Three inmates from San Quentin were transferred to the California Correctional Center in rural Susanville , sparking another outbreak .
Cases are climbing in the California Institution for Women .
Over 10,000 people incarcerated in California have contracted the virus — 57 have died @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in San Quentin has dropped off to a few dozen , according to the CDCR tracker .
But inmates are still crowded into cells .
Images on social media from inside the prison show dirty floors and garbage snagged on barbed wire barriers .
Quinn is still there and still sick .
So far , he says the prison infirmary hasn ’ t given him any medication for the virus , though he was told to stay hydrated and take Tylenol .
There is one small bright spot on the horizon .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he would release 8,000 inmates by the end of August , starting with those who have 180 days or less left to serve , according to the San Francisco Chronicle .
Even so , the Prison Law Office says that the plans aren ’ t aggressive enough and wouldn ’ t reduce the populations in the prison enough to get outbreaks under control .
They ’ re pushing to make more people eligible for release .
Quinn won ’ t be eligible to leave prison for years , but the announcement made him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out .
“ It ’ s like a lottery , ” he said .
“ You never know.
” San Quentin is now letting men back onto the yard , so they aren ’ t stuck in their cells all day .
After weeks of being indoors , it ’ s a welcome change .
It also allows new opportunities for information to spread around the prison .
So far , many of the rumors circulating are about who will get out and when .
Quinn ’ s mom , who recently had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to walk , is anxiously waiting to see if her son will be released .
She helped him line up a job working construction for when he gets out .
He has a place to stay with her cousin .
“ I feel for my baby in there , ” she says .
“ It ’ s been very scary not knowing what ’ s really going on in there .
San Quentin has a death row area , but it seems they ’ ve turned the whole place into death row now.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ identity of those involved .

When the test came back positive, Quinn* felt like he was getting a second sentence. “I believe that they sent COVID here to kill us. Simple as that,” he says. He’s a father living at San Quentin State Prison and one of over 2,200 inmates who’ve tested positive for COVID-19. The correctional facility, located in Northern California, is the center of the largest coronavirus outbreak in the country.
San Quentin was likely a preventable tragedy. Since March, experts have been warning that prison outbreaks of COVID-19 would be deadly and calling on federal judges to release inmates and reduce the size of the prison population.
That happened too late in California. Instead, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) moved men away from a prison in Chino, which was battling an outbreak, to San Quentin, which was virus-free. In doing so, they created a second hotspot — one even more deadly than the first. By July, more than a third of people at San Quentin had the virus, according to a report in Nature. By August, 24 inmates were dead.
This doesn’t feel like an accident
America’s failure to stop the virus from spreading in prisons is a key piece of its failure to contain the virus at large. Tens of thousands of people in prison have tested positive for the virus. From March through the beginning of June, the number of COVID-19 cases in US prisons grew at a rate of around 8 percent per day, compared to 3 percent in the general population. Of the top 20 largest disease clusters in the country, 19 are in prisons or jails.
To the men at San Quentin, this doesn’t feel like an accident. Speaking to The Verge on contraband cellphones, inmates discussed the systemic failings that led the facility to become a viral epicenter — failings they interpreted as intentional acts of aggression. While the men are largely cut off from the outside world, information trickles in, and conspiracy theories abound.
One theory, which Quinn believes, is that prison authorities released COVID-19 on purpose to kill off the prison population. “The governor said they weren’t going to execute people on death row anymore. So they sent the virus here to do what? To kill off people on death row,” he says. “They cost more money than anyone else here. So people like me are getting swept up in the process.”
His concerns may sound merely like rumors, but they reflect a deep-seated mistrust in the institution. That mistrust is, in many ways, warranted: while CDCR might not have intentionally released COVID-19 into the prison, months of political jockeying and legal fighting slowed the prison’s response to the pandemic and directly contributed to the outbreak. Instead of taking steps that could have kept inmates healthier, the system went down a path that made it easier for them to get sick.
The first inmate in the California prison system tested positive for COVID-19 in March. Just after the case was reported, Scott Kernan, a former secretary of CDCR, called the prisons a “tinderbox.” Then, on March 25th, lawyers and advocates filed a motion asking federal judges to order the state to reduce the prison population and release inmates with health conditions that would put them at risk for severe disease.
The system had a critical window to contain the virus, said Marc Stern, a correctional health care consultant and former assistant secretary for health care at the Washington State Department of Corrections, in an expert declaration accompanying the March 25th motion. “To be effective in reducing the spread of the virus, these downsizing measures must occur now.”
The state of California pushed back against those calls for inmate release. The state said it had already taken steps to protect people in the prisons from COVID-19: prisons suspended the intake of new inmates, prevented visitors, and planned to transfer people who lived in riskier, dorm-style housing. Besides, releasing medically high-risk inmates would put a strain on local health systems, state attorney general Xavier Becerra wrote in court filings in March.
The decision to not let in visitors was hard on inmates, like Quinn, who rely on family visits to stay hopeful. Quinn’s family sees him when they’re able to make the time-consuming trip. In the past, he tutored his sibling who had trouble with homework, and spoke to his mother and daughter frequently. Now, he’s not sure when he’ll see them again.
“If they ever declare martial law, they’re going to gas us”
Since the outbreak started, Quinn has hardly left his cell — a sparse four and a half by ten-foot, eight-inch space that he shares with one other person. He rarely has access to a shower. To try to stay healthy, he’s been drinking water and working out, but it’s hard with such limited floor space. Aside from badly chapped lips and a slight fever at the beginning of July, the worst symptom has been crippling anxiety.
When we talk, Quinn tends to discuss why the prison isn’t doing more to keep him safe and what might happen if the outbreak doesn’t improve. His cellmate, who also has the virus, is convinced he’s going to die. He also thinks the prison system is trying to kill him.
The Verge emailed San Quentin twice, and called five times, to request comment for this article. It did not receive a response.
Information travels quickly in prisons and jails, says Mary Rayne, a former West Virginia prison librarian. The facilities are news deserts, and any new bit of intel that squeezes in through cellphones or in letters is a valuable commodity. Anything that feeds on existing anxiety of prison life is sure to circulate widely. Rumors that the system is planning to exterminate inmates are familiar, Rayne says. “I worked in a prison where my circulation assistant said to me one day, ‘You know, if they ever declare martial law, they’re going to gas us,’” she says.
These types of rumors spread because inmates don’t trust the system charged with keeping them healthy, says Craig Haney, a social psychologist and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz who studies incarceration.
“Prisoners become accustomed to living in an environment where they feel people don’t have their best interests at heart and treat them as if they are not fully full human beings,” Haney says. “It’s not at all surprising that prisoners might come to believe that the prison system might have done this.”
From the outside, San Quentin looks like a castle overlooking the San Francisco Bay. It’s the oldest prison in California, the grounds split up in a horseshoe of buildings that house different groups of inmates. The four cell blocks — named North, East, South, West — are five stories high and have roughly 500 cells. H Unit, which is designed more like a dormitory, is partially reserved for men with documented mental health issues.
Quinn lives in a sparse cell populated by a bunk bed, a toilet, a sink, and a small cabinet. He gets three meals a day, two of them cold sack lunches that typically consist of a boiled egg and a slice of bread or an apple and a baloney sandwich. Dinner — the prison’s one hot meal — is cold by the time it’s served. “The food doesn’t get you full,” Quinn says. “It’s the same thing over and over.”
In the spring, as part of COVID-19 precautions, staff members on the mental health team selected some men to move from H Unit to North Block, in an effort to create more space. “We were forced to decide which guys were stable enough to go up there [to North Block],” a social worker named Erica* tells The Verge. “We had to come up with all these names. None of us wanted any of them to move.”
Erica was unable to continue seeing her patients after the move — the prison was worried about the virus spreading from inmates to staff. Recently, however, she heard that one of her former patients tested positive for coronavirus in North Block. The news confirmed a feeling she’d had for some time: the prison didn’t care about its inmates. “Corruption is everywhere,” she says. “These people make decisions and don’t care who it affects.”
“Corruption is everywhere”
As inmates in San Quentin were shuffled between buildings, COVID-19 was already spreading through the California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino, over 400 miles away. The number of inmates testing positive grew steadily through April, and by May 13th, 397 inmates had tested positive. By May 20th, about 599 had contracted the virus. Over two dozen of those inmates had severe enough symptoms that they had to be hospitalized outside the prison. Six had died, including a 65-year-old man close to parole. Each of the prison’s four facilities had outbreaks. In one of the dorm-style housing units, where inmates sleep in rows of bunk beds, over 60 percent of the residents had the virus by that point.
The legal battles meant inmates wouldn’t be released. But no one — not the state, the lawyers, or Clark Kelso, the federal receiver appointed to oversee medical care in the prison system — thought it was a good idea to transfer inmates between prisons. Transfers risked additional outbreaks, the Prison Law Office wrote in May 13th court filings, and should only happen if there’s enough testing to ensure that the inmates transferred don’t pose a risk to the prison to which they’re heading. The California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS) agreed, saying that moving inmates risked spreading the virus between prisons. CDCR wasn’t moving inmates.
But by the end of May, the state of California was nevertheless making plans to move about 700 medically vulnerable inmates out of CIM and over to other prisons. Kelso drew up a strategy described in a May 27th court filing: if the risk of keeping medically high-risk inmates where they were was higher than the risk of transfer, the state would consider moving them.
Every single housing unit in CIM, at that point, had at least one case of COVID-19. There was nowhere inside the prison to move the at-risk inmates, so Kelso and the secretary for the CDCR determined it was riskier to leave them there than to move them.
“We asked for releases, and they didn’t occur,” says Don Specter, the executive director of the Prison Law Office. “The receiver decided it was worthwhile to try and transfer some folks and get them out of harm’s way.”
Some of those high-risk inmates were set to move to San Quentin. They were supposed to be tested for COVID-19 before they left to ensure the transfer didn’t lead to another outbreak.
“Obviously,” Specter says, “that didn’t work.”
CCHCS didn’t have guidelines for when people should be tested for the virus before they were transferred. Many of the negative COVID-19 tests for the 120 men were more than a week old when they were transferred from CIM to San Quentin on May 30th. By the time buses left CIM, some inmates may have contracted the virus. Bus drivers and security who worked on the move also weren’t tested and may also have been the source of the outbreak. It’s hard to say for sure how the virus got into San Quentin, since contact tracing wasn’t reported.
There’s no evidence to suggest that it happened intentionally, says Brie Williams, a doctor who advised the state on how it should respond to the San Quentin COVID-19 outbreak. “That is such a devastating allegation, or rumor, and I don’t know anything to suggest that it’s true,” she says. Williams is also the director of the Criminal Justice & Health Consortium at the University of California, San Francisco.
The transfers happened because attorneys were terrified for their high-risk clients in CIM. “They identified people who were older or seriously ill to safeguard their health,” Williams says. “Then things went terribly wrong.”
It didn’t feel that way to Quinn. When he found out about the Chino transfers, it made the monthslong ban on visitors seem pointless, even cruel. His mother had been forced to cancel a trip she’d scheduled for this summer. “It was traumatizing even before you know if you got it or not,” he says. “Knowing they brought 121 men in here, and the numbers are rising every night…”
After the men from Chino arrived, people got sick. Rumors ran wild. The prevailing belief — the one echoed by the inmates who spoke to The Verge — was that the outbreak was deliberate. “I told the nurses, I think they’re trying to kill us,” Quinn’s cellmate says. “I don’t believe I’m going to make it out of here.”
When Quinn got tested for COVID-19, it took him two weeks to get his results. At the start of summer, the California prison system was struggling with inadequate COVID-19 testing, much like the country at large. San Quentin had the opportunity to get free coronavirus tests from researchers in the Bay Area but declined the offer. Results were taking so long that Quinn assumed he’d tested negative. Then he got a letter saying he had the disease.
The outbreak stripped inmates of any sense of control
The staff had their own theories for why people got sick. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this where they knew the men were sick and moved them,” says Erica, the social worker. “When you go through all the possibilities — me and all the staff members were talking, it comes down to that. It must have been on purpose — there’s no other explanation.”
Paranoia is always widespread in prisons and among inmates. “It’s a natural human response in an environment where you can’t control things yourself,” social psychologist Haney says. The health care inmates get in the best of times is regularly inadequate, and it’s maintained by lawsuits, not by what’s medically necessary. The pandemic only exacerbates that tension: inmates are afraid of infection, but there’s very little they can do to keep themselves safe. They can’t trust that guards are taking precautions when they’re not at work, they can’t stay away from each other, and they don’t have the usual contact with visitors, which makes things feel more stressful.
That environment makes it easy for inmates to feel like the people in charge are intentionally trying to make their lives worse. They’re reluctant to cooperate with health staff, which makes controlling the outbreak more difficult. Some inmates were wary of getting tested because they didn’t trust the medical staff at the facility — they worry that they could be pulled from a familiar cell and put somewhere worse. When prison officials tried to move inmates to cells lower in the building, they refused, over fears the virus particles would fall into their cells from above. “Dudes cough and sneeze, everything seems to fall,” Quinn says. “If you move me downstairs, below someone who has it, you put me at more risk.”
The outbreak stripped inmates of any sense of control or autonomy they may have been able to hold onto. “In this pandemic, where many of us feel like we’ve lost our freedoms and we’ve lost our ability to control our life, and it’s disconcerting and disorienting — it pales in comparison,” Haney says. “There is an undercurrent of helplessness in these environments.”
COVID-19 is still burning through the California prison system. Three inmates from San Quentin were transferred to the California Correctional Center in rural Susanville, sparking another outbreak. Cases are climbing in the California Institution for Women. Over 10,000 people incarcerated in California have contracted the virus — 57 have died.
The number of active COVID-19 cases in San Quentin has dropped off to a few dozen, according to the CDCR tracker. But inmates are still crowded into cells. Images on social media from inside the prison show dirty floors and garbage snagged on barbed wire barriers. Quinn is still there and still sick. So far, he says the prison infirmary hasn’t given him any medication for the virus, though he was told to stay hydrated and take Tylenol.
There is one small bright spot on the horizon. In July, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced he would release 8,000 inmates by the end of August, starting with those who have 180 days or less left to serve, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Even so, the Prison Law Office says that the plans aren’t aggressive enough and wouldn’t reduce the populations in the prison enough to get outbreaks under control. They’re pushing to make more people eligible for release.
Quinn won’t be eligible to leave prison for years, but the announcement made him hopeful that he too could eventually get out. “It’s like a lottery,” he said. “You never know.”
San Quentin is now letting men back onto the yard, so they aren’t stuck in their cells all day. After weeks of being indoors, it’s a welcome change. It also allows new opportunities for information to spread around the prison. So far, many of the rumors circulating are about who will get out and when.
Quinn’s mom, who recently had surgery on her leg and is struggling to walk, is anxiously waiting to see if her son will be released. She helped him line up a job working construction for when he gets out. He has a place to stay with her cousin. “I feel for my baby in there,” she says. “It’s been very scary not knowing what’s really going on in there. San Quentin has a death row area, but it seems they’ve turned the whole place into death row now.”


theverge--2020-08-28--Apple agrees to pay $9.75M settlement over alleged Powerbeats 2 ‘design defect’

If you ’ re a US resident who bought a pair of wireless Powerbeats 2 earbuds before August 7th , then you could soon get a payout over the allegedly “ defective ” device , MacRumors reports .
Apple has agreed to pay out $ 9.75 million , after it was accused of falsely advertising the so-called “ shoddy ” earbuds as “ sweat & water resistant ” and “ built to endure.
” However , the plaintiffs say that these claims weren ’ t true , and that the earbuds would stop holding their charge after “ minimal use.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it hasn ’ t admitted to doing anything wrong .
The legal filing notes that the company decided that settling was cheaper than the expense of going to trial .
Although the original lawsuit filing claims that Apple ’ s 2016 Powerbeats 3 headphones were also defective , the settlement only mentions the Powerbeats 2 , which were first released back in 2014 .
Apple hasn ’ t admitted to doing anything wrong If you want to submit a claim , then you can do so by filling out a form on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20th .
The amount you could get out of the lawsuit will vary based on a number of factors , including the number of people that make a claim in the lawsuit , whether you submit a proof of purchase , and whether there are any records of you getting a warranty repair or replacement for your headphones .
Page 5 of this document goes into more detail about how much you could receive , up to a theoretical maximum of $ 189 per proof of purchase .
A final hearing is scheduled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the proposed settlement .
Relief will be provided to class-action members only after the court gives final approval of the settlement and all appeals are exhausted .
Update August 28th , 7:55AM ET : Updated with additional details on payout amounts .

If you’re a US resident who bought a pair of wireless Powerbeats 2 earbuds before August 7th, then you could soon get a payout over the allegedly “defective” device, MacRumors reports. Apple has agreed to pay out $9.75 million, after it was accused of falsely advertising the so-called “shoddy” earbuds as “sweat & water resistant” and “built to endure.” However, the plaintiffs say that these claims weren’t true, and that the earbuds would stop holding their charge after “minimal use.”
Although Apple has agreed to settle, it hasn’t admitted to doing anything wrong. The legal filing notes that the company decided that settling was cheaper than the expense of going to trial. Although the original lawsuit filing claims that Apple’s 2016 Powerbeats 3 headphones were also defective, the settlement only mentions the Powerbeats 2, which were first released back in 2014.
Apple hasn’t admitted to doing anything wrong
If you want to submit a claim, then you can do so by filling out a form on the lawsuit’s website by November 20th. The amount you could get out of the lawsuit will vary based on a number of factors, including the number of people that make a claim in the lawsuit, whether you submit a proof of purchase, and whether there are any records of you getting a warranty repair or replacement for your headphones. Page 5 of this document goes into more detail about how much you could receive, up to a theoretical maximum of $189 per proof of purchase.
A final hearing is scheduled for January 15th to determine the fairness of the proposed settlement. Relief will be provided to class-action members only after the court gives final approval of the settlement and all appeals are exhausted.


theverge--2020-08-28--How Japanese rock star Miyavi performs in a world without live music

The only live music I ’ ve managed to see all year came from an unexpected place .
I recently found myself on a Friday night after hours at teamLab Planets , a popular tourist spot in Tokyo , watching rock star Miyavi working on his latest “ Miyavi Virtual ” project .
Miyavi Virtual 3.0 will be available to buy and stream later today — it ’ s a live performance mixing drone footage with dazzling digital art .
At one point Miyavi , a bouncy , enthusiastic character with blue-green hair and a wiry frame covered in black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me for a distanced elbow bump and asked if I was feeling sleepy .
To be honest , I kind of was — it turns out that recordings for glitzy live-streaming productions can involve a lot of waiting around well past midnight .
But that ’ s just how it goes in 2020 .
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rob creators of the ability to play in front of live audiences or even record music videos in traditional studios , Miyavi and his creative teams are resorting to technology — and unusual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ front of fans .
Born Takamasa Ishihara in Osaka in 1981 , Miyavi is best known for his fast-paced , catchy electro-rock music and frenetic guitar playing .
He started out in the visual kei band Dué le Quartz before embarking on a solo career that eventually began to encompass modeling and acting , including roles in Hollywood movies like Unbroken and Kong : Skull Island .
In other words , he tends to have a full calendar , and 2020 was supposed to have been no different .
Miyavi normally bases himself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was booked for some movies , TV projects , and a Gucci campaign .
Then , his latest solo album Holy Nights was set for an April release with a tour to follow .
But by the beginning of March , Miyavi found himself back in Tokyo , and it was clear that plans would have to change .
“ For us creators , you know , we can ’ t do live performances now , ” Miyavi told me earlier over Zoom .
“ So it ’ s really a crucial time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new normal.
” To start with , Miyavi ’ s need to work in both Japan and the US complicates matters .
“ To be honest , we had lots of paths and lots of ideas , and we also had a lot of arguments because nobody knew what it was gon na be like , ” he says .
“ Each country has a different situation .
Usually I have my team in Japan in Tokyo , and a team in America , so we all talk .
But the situations [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are all different .
So we heard lots of ‘ it ’ s not the time to shoot a music video.
” ’ We listened but we didn ’ t stop , because in Japan , even at that time , record stores were not closed .
So we were planning to do a regular campaign and I was even shooting TV programs.
” But it soon became evident that plans to shoot two music videos in the US weren ’ t going to work out .
“ In America , the emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as we found out that Miyavi can not fly out to the States , we ’ ve got to switch to more virtual creation , ” Miyavi says .
( He sometimes talks in the third person . )
“ That ’ s why we started making the music video for ‘ Holy Nights ’ with our animators , so that creates a world without having me.
” Miyavi dropped the anime-influenced “ Holy Nights ” video , developed by his US creative team , on YouTube on May 10th , proclaiming it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Virtual.
” But an anime music video doesn ’ t capture a real performance .
For that , a new technological approach would be required .
Director David Cihelna talked with Miyavi ’ s US-based creative directors Dyan Jong and Annie Stoll about using volumetric capture with the video for “ Need for Speed , ” the next single .
This is a technique that employs several cameras at once to capture a 3D model that can be used in CGI renderings .
It allows for “ virtual ” video that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , it ’ s easier to do safely than a traditional shoot right now .
“ The only physical shooting we did was in a volumetric capture studio in Japan , ” Cihelna tells The Verge .
“ We had a minimal team there , pretty much just Miyavi recording 3D models of his movements .
The rest of the team was on Zoom , I directed him remotely.
” “ This technology is between VR , AR , and reality , so I was really fascinated , ” Miyavi says @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , my tattoos and my hairstyle !
So it was pretty tough to choose a costume — I wasn ’ t allowed to wear any green stuff , it ’ s got to be really solid and tight because while shooting I was surrounded by a green background .
It ’ s all imagination .
It was a really interesting experience , and I felt the future .
I think the key for the post-corona era is how real we can feel in a virtual world.
” “ The capture studio has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ video that is then processed into frame-by-frame 3D models played back in the game engine , ” Cihelna says .
“ That took half a day .
The rest ( 99 percent ) was all virtual and directly in Unity — camera movements , lighting , set design , VFX , color .
I even used augmented reality to record camera shots in my living room.
” “ The amount of data is huge , ” Miyavi adds .
“ We could only use a seven minute clip — we shot more , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go all through the data , and sending that data from Tokyo to LA is a big deal as well .
I really appreciated it , all the staff and David and his team did a great job.
” The result , well , looks like a video game starring Miyavi .
The resolution on his model is of course not as high as you ’ d get from a conventional camera or something rendered in 3D by hand , but the production leans into it with otherworldly glitches and particle effects .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ m using superpowers when playing the guitar !
” Miyavi laughs , adding that the effects were all added later based on his performance .
“ I know it ’ s really hard work for them , but it ’ s fun for me just jumping around .
We all like manga and anime , Dragon Ball and Akira , we all have the same references so I think we ’ re all connected as humans without having a conversation.
” The next step for Miyavi was figuring out how he could actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turned to streaming on platforms like Twitch , YouTube , Weibo , and Line , setting up a studio in his home and performing a “ Virtual Live ” concert standing at his desk .
Unsurprisingly , the results weren ’ t quite as slick as the “ Need for Speed ” video , although it ’ s still striking to see someone theatrically shred on their Telecaster right into a webcam in a setting that looks more suited to streaming Overwatch .
“ It ’ s quite challenging — setting up OBS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and I was doing the sound mix and lighting and everything , ” Miyavi says .
“ So I just realized that I ’ m not a professional at this kind of thing .
But I just didn ’ t want to stop , because there ’ s something we can do in any situation , and I didn ’ t want to give up — just [ wanted to ] find something , find a way to move forward .
And I still think that was the right move even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was able to be connected with my fans and share time with them and with my creation.
” Miyavi then wanted to try combining high-tech experimentation with live broadcasting .
“ We just did the broadcasting from a studio in Tokyo with drones , ” he says .
“ That was the biggest priority for me to try — I didn ’ t even know how long drones can fly , you know ?
And that ’ s the approach that I ’ m trying to do in the real world.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ performance with a live drummer on a socially distanced stage with no audience except for the fleet of drones buzzing around the band and capturing its performance .
“ You can do anything with volumetric capture , but it takes time for the production , and I wanted to do broadcasting using my real body .
It ’ s really important to experiment , ” Miyavi says .
I haven ’ t seen the finished version of Miyavi Virtual 3.0 , but from what I saw it appears to be a similar production @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impressive setting .
Much of the video capture is also by drone , and the mirrors and lights surrounding Miyavi make it look like he ’ s performing in the middle of a spectacular void .
There ’ s a reason why teamLab Planets has been maybe the most ubiquitous “ I finally went there ” sight on Tokyo ’ s Instagram feeds since it opened a couple of years ago .
Unlike 2.0 , however , Virtual 3.0 won ’ t be streamed live — it was pre-recorded , and you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ticket to watch it over the period of its availability .
Outside Japan , you can start viewing from 6PM ET today .
While the original plan was for a live performance , Miyavi says that the decision to switch to a pre-recording is “ due to the intention of creating and prioritizing artwork that has high video quality , amazing light design etc.
” ( I ’ m not sure whether the shoots I was present for will actually make it into the final production , but you can at least take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and performing live . )
I wanted to know where Miyavi thinks he might go next with these virtual productions .
Even before the pandemic , virtual concerts were getting increasingly popular , with Fortnite at the vanguard .
Is this an area he ’ d like to explore ?
“ Yeah I ’ d love to !
” he says .
“ Because now I ’ m really into Fortnite — I started playing Fortnite in 2018 while I was shooting the Maleficent sequel in London , because I had lots of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I was playing with my daughters .
Now I play with my daughters even before they go to school — we call it ‘ Fort-morning , ’ we wake them up and play for 30 or 45 minutes .
As a musician , I feel the music Miyavi makes has a chemistry with those games .
Even “ Need for Speed ” — [ my wife ] Melody used to be in the game !
She was one of the characters in [ EA ’ s ] Need for Speed over 10 years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fortnite , we believe that Miyavi ’ s music really really works with those high-energy concepts .
But I ’ m always trying not to play too much !
” As far as the actual experience of Fortnite in-game concerts goes , however , Miyavi thinks there ’ s room for improvement .
“ That was cool as an advertisement , for sure , ” he says of Travis Scott ’ s recent event .
“ There were lots of people — 10 or 20 million , right ?
So it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Marshmello did it and Steve Aoki and other big players .
It ’ s pretty cool , but I don ’ t know how much he performed for that performance .
It seems like it was programmed , no ?
It was a creation , which is cool .
But to me , it was not the chemistry between real and virtual worlds .
It was 90 percent virtual , with the music made by human beings .
So I didn ’ t feel real in that virtual world .
Of course it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it but I still kind of think there [ can be ] closer contact with people in a virtual world.
” Miyavi is careful to note that this experimentation is the direct result of a desperate period in human history .
“ I do not say that I am enjoying this time , ” he says .
“ There are lots of crazy , sad things happening all over the world and people losing their jobs .
Politics are turning really messed up , especially in the States .
And then right after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ] started — sooner or later it was going to happen and it ’ s good to have it now so that we start facing the real deep issues and problems that America has been having , which actually other countries like Japan [ also ] have in some way.
” Miyavi believes that the global situation will prompt people to live and work in new ways even after things improve — himself included .
“ I ’ m a traveler — I travel a lot , and I love experiencing things with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ To feel that atmosphere is really really crucial .
But at the same time , the world is going to be different , no matter what .
Even if we get back to normal , I think that our lifestyle will be different , and the way we create will be different .
Because now we know what we can do .
This situation kind of pushed us forward .
We had to find a way — what ’ s essential ?
What ’ s a core value ?
Even the meaning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skill I got in this life is to play the guitar with this physical body , so I wan na find a way to mix with virtual technologies .
That ’ s my responsibility as a bridge to the next generation .
”

The only live music I’ve managed to see all year came from an unexpected place. I recently found myself on a Friday night after hours at teamLab Planets, a popular tourist spot in Tokyo, watching rock star Miyavi working on his latest “Miyavi Virtual” project. Miyavi Virtual 3.0 will be available to buy and stream later today — it’s a live performance mixing drone footage with dazzling digital art.
At one point Miyavi, a bouncy, enthusiastic character with blue-green hair and a wiry frame covered in black ink wash-style tattoos, came over to me for a distanced elbow bump and asked if I was feeling sleepy. To be honest, I kind of was — it turns out that recordings for glitzy live-streaming productions can involve a lot of waiting around well past midnight.
But that’s just how it goes in 2020. As the coronavirus pandemic continues to rob creators of the ability to play in front of live audiences or even record music videos in traditional studios, Miyavi and his creative teams are resorting to technology — and unusual work hours — to keep performing in front of fans.
Miyavi follows a drone outside teamLab Planets in Tokyo. Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge
Born Takamasa Ishihara in Osaka in 1981, Miyavi is best known for his fast-paced, catchy electro-rock music and frenetic guitar playing. He started out in the visual kei band Dué le Quartz before embarking on a solo career that eventually began to encompass modeling and acting, including roles in Hollywood movies like Unbroken and Kong: Skull Island.
In other words, he tends to have a full calendar, and 2020 was supposed to have been no different. Miyavi normally bases himself in LA, and early this year was booked for some movies, TV projects, and a Gucci campaign. Then, his latest solo album Holy Nights was set for an April release with a tour to follow. But by the beginning of March, Miyavi found himself back in Tokyo, and it was clear that plans would have to change.
“For us creators, you know, we can’t do live performances now,” Miyavi told me earlier over Zoom. “So it’s really a crucial time to find a new way, a new normal.”
To start with, Miyavi’s need to work in both Japan and the US complicates matters. “To be honest, we had lots of paths and lots of ideas, and we also had a lot of arguments because nobody knew what it was gonna be like,” he says. “Each country has a different situation. Usually I have my team in Japan in Tokyo, and a team in America, so we all talk. But the situations [with COVID-19] we’re in are all different. So we heard lots of ‘it’s not the time to shoot a music video.”’ We listened but we didn’t stop, because in Japan, even at that time, record stores were not closed. So we were planning to do a regular campaign and I was even shooting TV programs.”
But it soon became evident that plans to shoot two music videos in the US weren’t going to work out. “In America, the emergency declaration already happened, and as soon as we found out that Miyavi cannot fly out to the States, we’ve got to switch to more virtual creation,” Miyavi says. (He sometimes talks in the third person.) “That’s why we started making the music video for ‘Holy Nights’ with our animators, so that creates a world without having me.”
Miyavi dropped the anime-influenced “Holy Nights” video, developed by his US creative team, on YouTube on May 10th, proclaiming it to be the beginning of “Miyavi Virtual.” But an anime music video doesn’t capture a real performance. For that, a new technological approach would be required.
Director David Cihelna talked with Miyavi’s US-based creative directors Dyan Jong and Annie Stoll about using volumetric capture with the video for “Need for Speed,” the next single. This is a technique that employs several cameras at once to capture a 3D model that can be used in CGI renderings. It allows for “virtual” video that’s based on an actual performance — and of course, it’s easier to do safely than a traditional shoot right now.
“The only physical shooting we did was in a volumetric capture studio in Japan,” Cihelna tells The Verge. “We had a minimal team there, pretty much just Miyavi recording 3D models of his movements. The rest of the team was on Zoom, I directed him remotely.”
“This technology is between VR, AR, and reality, so I was really fascinated,” Miyavi says. “Especially since it captures, like, my tattoos and my hairstyle! So it was pretty tough to choose a costume — I wasn’t allowed to wear any green stuff, it’s got to be really solid and tight because while shooting I was surrounded by a green background. It’s all imagination. It was a really interesting experience, and I felt the future. I think the key for the post-corona era is how real we can feel in a virtual world.”
“The capture studio has dozens of cameras pointed at him recording video that is then processed into frame-by-frame 3D models played back in the game engine,” Cihelna says. “That took half a day. The rest (99 percent) was all virtual and directly in Unity — camera movements, lighting, set design, VFX, color. I even used augmented reality to record camera shots in my living room.”
“The amount of data is huge,” Miyavi adds. “We could only use a seven minute clip — we shot more, but David and his staff had to go all through the data, and sending that data from Tokyo to LA is a big deal as well. I really appreciated it, all the staff and David and his team did a great job.”
The result, well, looks like a video game starring Miyavi. The resolution on his model is of course not as high as you’d get from a conventional camera or something rendered in 3D by hand, but the production leans into it with otherworldly glitches and particle effects.
“It was cool — I’m using superpowers when playing the guitar!” Miyavi laughs, adding that the effects were all added later based on his performance. “I know it’s really hard work for them, but it’s fun for me just jumping around. We all like manga and anime, Dragon Ball and Akira, we all have the same references so I think we’re all connected as humans without having a conversation.”
The next step for Miyavi was figuring out how he could actually perform live online. At first he turned to streaming on platforms like Twitch, YouTube, Weibo, and Line, setting up a studio in his home and performing a “Virtual Live” concert standing at his desk. Unsurprisingly, the results weren’t quite as slick as the “Need for Speed” video, although it’s still striking to see someone theatrically shred on their Telecaster right into a webcam in a setting that looks more suited to streaming Overwatch.
“It’s quite challenging — setting up OBS, connecting the sound inside my PC, and I was doing the sound mix and lighting and everything,” Miyavi says. “So I just realized that I’m not a professional at this kind of thing. But I just didn’t want to stop, because there’s something we can do in any situation, and I didn’t want to give up — just [wanted to] find something, find a way to move forward. And I still think that was the right move even if it was not perfect, at least I was able to be connected with my fans and share time with them and with my creation.”
Miyavi then wanted to try combining high-tech experimentation with live broadcasting. “We just did the broadcasting from a studio in Tokyo with drones,” he says. “That was the biggest priority for me to try — I didn’t even know how long drones can fly, you know? And that’s the approach that I’m trying to do in the real world.”
Miyavi Virtual Live Level 2.0 was a performance with a live drummer on a socially distanced stage with no audience except for the fleet of drones buzzing around the band and capturing its performance. “You can do anything with volumetric capture, but it takes time for the production, and I wanted to do broadcasting using my real body. It’s really important to experiment,” Miyavi says.
I haven’t seen the finished version of Miyavi Virtual 3.0, but from what I saw it appears to be a similar production — just in a much more visually impressive setting. Much of the video capture is also by drone, and the mirrors and lights surrounding Miyavi make it look like he’s performing in the middle of a spectacular void. There’s a reason why teamLab Planets has been maybe the most ubiquitous “I finally went there” sight on Tokyo’s Instagram feeds since it opened a couple of years ago.
Unlike 2.0, however, Virtual 3.0 won’t be streamed live — it was pre-recorded, and you’ll need to buy a $30 ticket to watch it over the period of its availability. Outside Japan, you can start viewing from 6PM ET today. While the original plan was for a live performance, Miyavi says that the decision to switch to a pre-recording is “due to the intention of creating and prioritizing artwork that has high video quality, amazing light design etc.” (I’m not sure whether the shoots I was present for will actually make it into the final production, but you can at least take it from me that he was there and performing live.)
Miyavi inside teamLab Planets in Tokyo. Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge
I wanted to know where Miyavi thinks he might go next with these virtual productions. Even before the pandemic, virtual concerts were getting increasingly popular, with Fortnite at the vanguard. Is this an area he’d like to explore?
“Yeah I’d love to!” he says. “Because now I’m really into Fortnite — I started playing Fortnite in 2018 while I was shooting the Maleficent sequel in London, because I had lots of time while waiting for my turn and I was playing with my daughters. Now I play with my daughters even before they go to school — we call it ‘Fort-morning,’ we wake them up and play for 30 or 45 minutes. As a musician, I feel the music Miyavi makes has a chemistry with those games. Even “Need for Speed” — [my wife] Melody used to be in the game! She was one of the characters in [EA’s] Need for Speed over 10 years ago. So Need for Speed, Fortnite, we believe that Miyavi’s music really really works with those high-energy concepts. But I’m always trying not to play too much!”
As far as the actual experience of Fortnite in-game concerts goes, however, Miyavi thinks there’s room for improvement. “That was cool as an advertisement, for sure,” he says of Travis Scott’s recent event. “There were lots of people — 10 or 20 million, right? So it’s huge numbers, and even before that Marshmello did it and Steve Aoki and other big players. It’s pretty cool, but I don’t know how much he performed for that performance. It seems like it was programmed, no? It was a creation, which is cool. But to me, it was not the chemistry between real and virtual worlds. It was 90 percent virtual, with the music made by human beings. So I didn’t feel real in that virtual world. Of course it’s great and I really respect it but I still kind of think there [can be] closer contact with people in a virtual world.”
Miyavi’s guitar, pedals, and 360-degree camera setup. Photo by Sam Byford / The Verge
Miyavi is careful to note that this experimentation is the direct result of a desperate period in human history. “I do not say that I am enjoying this time,” he says. “There are lots of crazy, sad things happening all over the world and people losing their jobs. Politics are turning really messed up, especially in the States. And then right after corona, Black Lives Matter [protests] started — sooner or later it was going to happen and it’s good to have it now so that we start facing the real deep issues and problems that America has been having, which actually other countries like Japan [also] have in some way.”
Miyavi believes that the global situation will prompt people to live and work in new ways even after things improve — himself included. “I’m a traveler — I travel a lot, and I love experiencing things with my eyes,” he says. “To feel that atmosphere is really really crucial. But at the same time, the world is going to be different, no matter what. Even if we get back to normal, I think that our lifestyle will be different, and the way we create will be different. Because now we know what we can do. This situation kind of pushed us forward. We had to find a way — what’s essential? What’s a core value? Even the meaning of music we make.”


theverge--2020-08-28--Why TikTok may not survive being sold

Why TikTok may not survive being sold

The Interface is a daily column and newsletter about the intersection of social media and democracy .
Subscribe here .
TikTok is in trouble .
Over the course of less than a day , the company lost its CEO and gained a surprising new suitor .
The breakout social app could be within days of making a deal to sell itself to an American company — but the turmoil surrounding the sale threatens to leave the company permanently damaged .
First , the CEO .
In May , longtime Disney executive Kevin Mayer left the company to become chief operating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , its popular US subsidiary .
“ As one of the world ’ s most accomplished entertainment executives , Kevin is incredibly well placed to take ByteDance ’ s portfolio of products to the next level , ” ByteDance founder and CEO Yiming Zhang said at the time .
Mayer was coming off the wildly successful launch of Disney Plus , which rocketed to more than 50 million subscribers in less than six months .
Disney ’ s board of directors had passed Mayer over for the CEO job anyway , though , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Thus began Mayer ’ s brief and mostly silent reign at TikTok , which was thrown into disarray earlier this month when President Trump ordered ByteDance to sell it within 45 days .
The sale could have left Mayer the COO of China ’ s ByteDance and also the CEO of its newly independent American spinoff company , which seems untenable .
And even if Mayer had wanted to become CEO of TikTok , at the moment it remains unclear what TikTok will even be .
One global company based in America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wholly owned subsidiary of a big-box retailer ?
Whatever the answer is , Mayer said the hell with it .
He wrote in a letter to employees : It ’ s hard to imagine Mayer didn ’ t see at least some of this coming .
The investigation into ByteDance by the Council on Foreign Investment in the United States has been underway for almost a year now , and I wrote about the growing likelihood of a forced TikTok sale as far back as January .
The pressure on ByteDance to sell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one direction so long as Trump is president , and it ’ s hard to believe Mayer hadn ’ t taken that into account when he signed up to become COO .
At the same time , even people who have mostly gotten used to Trump ’ s chaotic rule-by-whim can still occasionally find themselves surprised by one of his decrees .
Certainly I do !
Had the president not thought to act against ByteDance before the election , it ’ s possible Mayer would have had a longer and more productive run @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll become a strange footnote in the story of TikTok and whatever becomes of it .
In the meantime , Vanessa Pappas , a former YouTube executive and the current general manager of TikTok in North America , will become interim CEO .
Pappas is whip-smart and has acquitted herself well in a series of recent interviews ; I hope she ’ ll get a chance to put her stamp on TikTok as its leader .
But there ’ s still the question of who will own TikTok , and today an odd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two hottest teen tech brands , Microsoft and Walmart , are teaming up for a bid .
Here ’ s Melissa Repko at CNBC : I ’ m including the awful corporate jargon here to illustrate just how tone-deaf Walmart ’ s entry into this race has been .
Perhaps TikTok ’ s destiny was always to turn into a kind of QVC for Generation Z , but Walmart ’ s language doesn ’ t inspire much confidence that it will be executed with much style or finesse .
That said , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( and reportedly to Zhang ) than the other big player in the hunt : Larry Ellison ’ s Oracle , which has spent the entire Trump Administration flattering the president ’ s ego and may now be poised to reap the rewards .
( Among the people who Ellison ’ s support has offended are his employees , who walked out on the job in February after he announced he was throwing Trump a fundraiser . )
What are the possible paths ahead for TikTok ?
Mike Isaac lays them out in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most vibrant consumer app of the moment now seems destined to fall into the hands of one enterprise software company or another .
Yes , Microsoft has demonstrated that it can acquire a big consumer property and keep it stable — some people may not even realize that it owns Minecraft or LinkedIn .
But the TikTok challenge promises to be much harder — the company will have to somehow recreate ByteDance ’ s powerful algorithmic feed , design a steady stream of new features and experiences to keep influencers engaged , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Snapchat , and a host of TikTok clones along the way .
In the past , TikTok was able to power through the many challenges facing it by relying on a remarkably adept and focused ByteDance team that was born in an environment of hyper-competitive fast following .
Nothing in the history of Microsoft , Walmart , or Oracle inspires much confidence that any of them is up to replicating that culture .
TikTok has surprised me with its cleverness before .
But after the Trump administration finishes mugging ByteDance , it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the elements that have made it so successful to date will survive .
Perhaps one of the companies now circling it can replicate them eventually .
But it seems just as likely to me that they will fail to grasp what made TikTok tick in the first place .
Today in news that could change public perception of the big tech companies ⬆ Trending up : Twitter will now hide tweets containing text that has been copy and pasted without any modifications from the source .
The news comes shortly after a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claiming to be a Black Lives Matter protester deciding to vote Republican .
( Shubham Agarwal / Digital Trends ) ⬇Trending down : Twitter needs to act much faster to take action on tweets that spread false information about the election .
An analysis of a Trump tweet that contained misleading information about mail-in voting shows most of the spread had likely already occurred by the time Twitter stepped in .
( Election Integrity Partnership ) ⭐ Multiple threads on Facebook and Reddit encouraged militiamen to head to Kenosha , Washington , ostensibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In some cases , the discussions encouraged acts of violence .
The conspiracy website InfoWars amplified the call to arms .
The Digital Forensic Research Lab reports : See also Facebook ’ s Brian Fishman on what the company has found so far on the Kenosha shooting .
In January , the 17-year-old charged with killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha , Washington appeared in the front row at a Donald Trump rally .
His social media presence is filled with him posing with weapons , posting “ Blue Lives Matter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Ellie Hall , Amber Jamieson , Tasneem Nashrulla and Kadia Goba / BuzzFeed ) The technocratic language Facebook uses in its takedown numbers hides the fact that the platform helped create the very problem it ’ s talking about solving .
Every time Facebook releases these numbers , it is asking us to think about all the people the company didn ’ t harm , this author says .
( Chris Gilliard / OneZero ) A meaningful percentage of Americans are living in an alternate reality powered by a completely separate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phenomenon was on full display at this week ’ s Republican National Convention .
( Charlie Warzel / The New York Times ) A coalition of voting rights and watchdog groups is suing the Trump administration over its Section 230 executive order .
The groups say the order is “ fundamentally incompatible with the First Amendment ” and is meant to limit voters ’ right to receive information about the election .
( Issie Lapowsky / Protocol ) Rep. David Cicilline , the Democrat leading the investigation into the tech giants , is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ next month .
One possibility might be a Glass-Steagall law for tech platforms , which would prohibit them them from running a platform and competing on it at the same time .
( David McLaughlin / Bloomberg ) Government officials Investigators building an antitrust case against Google are investigating whether the company engages in tying : the practice of bundling different products together in a way that can block out competitors and give the seller an unfair advantage .
( Gerrit De Vynck and Mark Bergen / Bloomberg ) US companies operating in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could hurt their ability to effectively communicate with staff and local authorities .
More than a dozen firms , including Apple , Walmart , and Ford , have approached the White House in recent weeks to voice their concerns that the order could extend into China .
( Liza Lin / The Wall Street Journal ) Epic secured a temporary restraining order to protect the business in the short term , but the fate of the Unreal Engine is still up in the air .
If Apple prevails , it could endanger an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the engine .
( Nick Statt / The Verge ) Facebook filed a lawsuit against MobiBurn , an app it says harvested user data without permission .
The move comes after Facebook launched an investigation into two third-party software development kits that security researchers found were collecting data without consent .
( Alfred Ng / CNET ) ⭐ Employees at some of the biggest businesses in the US say management has banned them from alerting colleagues or customers about COVID-19 outbreaks .
Some companies have retaliated against workers who spoke out — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Bloomberg has the story : The Daily Wire , the conservative blog started by Ben Shapiro , was the top publisher on Facebook in July 2020 .
It was followed by CNN and Fox News .
( Benedict Nicholson / NewsWhip ) Discord has grown to more than 100 million monthly active users during the pandemic , and the number of reports the Trust and Safety team has received has almost doubled .
Of those , 36.6 percent had to do with harassment .
The platform is also dealing with an influx @ @ @ @ @ @ @ transparency report .
( Discord ) There ’ s now an economy around viral videos of adults throwing tantrums , where clips of various Karens flipping out can be sure to get tons of traffic .
The process isn ’ t entirely organic .
( Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic ) “ Criminal Minds ” TikTok , where fans share videos about the CBS crime procedural , is blowing up and prolonging the the series ’ lifespan .
Videos marked with the # criminalminds hashtag have been viewed over 1.5 billion times on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Los Angeles Times ) Disability activists are speaking out against a TikTok challenge that involves parents showing their kids photos of a disabled person and saying it ’ s their new teacher .
“ Disabled people aren ’ t here for your ridicule .
We ’ re not punchlines .
We ’ re people , ” the author writes .
( Melissa Blake / Refinery29 ) Tens of thousands of Fortnite accounts are being sold everyday in a black market of stolen video game credentials that generates $ 1 billion annually .
Criminals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accounts a second to discover if login data stolen in recent data breaches unlock any Fortnite accounts .
( Olga Kharif / Bloomberg ) Stuff to occupy you online during quarantine Watch the trailer for The Social Dilemma , a documentary coming to Netflix next month .
A variety of tech apostates and critics , including Tristan Harris , Renee DiResta , Roger McNamee , and Jaron Lanier share their concerns about life under algorithms .
Microsoft Flight Simulator players are hunting down Hurricane Laura as it approaches the US Gulf Coast .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is providing a surreal spectacle for players .
( Tom Warren / The Verge ) Send us tips , comments , questions , and TikToks set inside a Walmart : casey @ theverge.com and zoe @ theverge.com .

TikTok is in trouble. Over the course of less than a day, the company lost its CEO and gained a surprising new suitor. The breakout social app could be within days of making a deal to sell itself to an American company — but the turmoil surrounding the sale threatens to leave the company permanently damaged.
First, the CEO. In May, longtime Disney executive Kevin Mayer left the company to become chief operating officer at ByteDance and CEO of TikTok, its popular US subsidiary. “As one of the world’s most accomplished entertainment executives, Kevin is incredibly well placed to take ByteDance’s portfolio of products to the next level,” ByteDance founder and CEO Yiming Zhang said at the time.
Mayer was coming off the wildly successful launch of Disney Plus, which rocketed to more than 50 million subscribers in less than six months. Disney’s board of directors had passed Mayer over for the CEO job anyway, though, and so he had reason to leave. Thus began Mayer’s brief and mostly silent reign at TikTok, which was thrown into disarray earlier this month when President Trump ordered ByteDance to sell it within 45 days.
The sale could have left Mayer the COO of China’s ByteDance and also the CEO of its newly independent American spinoff company, which seems untenable. And even if Mayer had wanted to become CEO of TikTok, at the moment it remains unclear what TikTok will even be. One global company based in America? Multiple companies operating independently? A wholly owned subsidiary of a big-box retailer?
Whatever the answer is, Mayer said the hell with it. He wrote in a letter to employees:
In recent weeks, as the political environment has sharply changed, I have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require, and what it means for the global role I signed up for. Against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that I wanted to let you all know that I have decided to leave the company.
It’s hard to imagine Mayer didn’t see at least some of this coming. The investigation into ByteDance by the Council on Foreign Investment in the United States has been underway for almost a year now, and I wrote about the growing likelihood of a forced TikTok sale as far back as January. The pressure on ByteDance to sell was only ever going to ratchet in one direction so long as Trump is president, and it’s hard to believe Mayer hadn’t taken that into account when he signed up to become COO.
At the same time, even people who have mostly gotten used to Trump’s chaotic rule-by-whim can still occasionally find themselves surprised by one of his decrees. Certainly I do! Had the president not thought to act against ByteDance before the election, it’s possible Mayer would have had a longer and more productive run. At it stands, he’ll become a strange footnote in the story of TikTok and whatever becomes of it.
In the meantime, Vanessa Pappas, a former YouTube executive and the current general manager of TikTok in North America, will become interim CEO. Pappas is whip-smart and has acquitted herself well in a series of recent interviews; I hope she’ll get a chance to put her stamp on TikTok as its leader.
But there’s still the question of who will own TikTok, and today an odd new challenger appeared. America’s two hottest teen tech brands, Microsoft and Walmart, are teaming up for a bid. Here’s Melissa Repko at CNBC:
In a statement, the big-box retailer said TikTok’s integration of e-commerce and advertising “is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets.” It did not say how it would use TikTok or whether it would be part of Walmart+. “We believe a potential relationship with TikTok US in partnership with Microsoft could add this key functionality and provide Walmart with an important way for us to reach and serve omnichannel customers as well as grow our third-party marketplace and advertising businesses,” it said. “We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators.”
I’m including the awful corporate jargon here to illustrate just how tone-deaf Walmart’s entry into this race has been. Perhaps TikTok’s destiny was always to turn into a kind of QVC for Generation Z, but Walmart’s language doesn’t inspire much confidence that it will be executed with much style or finesse.
That said, a Microsoft-Walmart pairing still seems preferable to me (and reportedly to Zhang) than the other big player in the hunt: Larry Ellison’s Oracle, which has spent the entire Trump Administration flattering the president’s ego and may now be poised to reap the rewards. (Among the people who Ellison’s support has offended are his employees, who walked out on the job in February after he announced he was throwing Trump a fundraiser.)
What are the possible paths ahead for TikTok? Mike Isaac lays them out in the New York Times:
A deal with Microsoft and Walmart could draw on Walmart’s digital sales background to turn TikTok into a kind of e-commerce app for both creators and users, people involved in the talks said. That could make TikTok more like Douyin, ByteDance’s TikTok-like Chinese-language video app, which already has e-commerce integrated into it. A deal with Oracle, the enterprise software company, would be more of a data play. Oracle could use TikTok’s data about social interactions to benefit its cloud, data and advertising businesses, the people said.
And so the most vibrant consumer app of the moment now seems destined to fall into the hands of one enterprise software company or another. Yes, Microsoft has demonstrated that it can acquire a big consumer property and keep it stable — some people may not even realize that it owns Minecraft or LinkedIn. But the TikTok challenge promises to be much harder — the company will have to somehow recreate ByteDance’s powerful algorithmic feed, design a steady stream of new features and experiences to keep influencers engaged, and fend off fierce competition from Facebook, Snapchat, and a host of TikTok clones along the way.
In the past, TikTok was able to power through the many challenges facing it by relying on a remarkably adept and focused ByteDance team that was born in an environment of hyper-competitive fast following. Nothing in the history of Microsoft, Walmart, or Oracle inspires much confidence that any of them is up to replicating that culture.
TikTok has surprised me with its cleverness before. But after the Trump administration finishes mugging ByteDance, it’s unclear to me how many of the elements that have made it so successful to date will survive. Perhaps one of the companies now circling it can replicate them eventually. But it seems just as likely to me that they will fail to grasp what made TikTok tick in the first place.
The Ratio
Today in news that could change public perception of the big tech companies
⬆ Trending up: Twitter will now hide tweets containing text that has been copy and pasted without any modifications from the source. The news comes shortly after a number of accounts shared a viral message claiming to be a Black Lives Matter protester deciding to vote Republican. (Shubham Agarwal / Digital Trends)
⬇Trending down: Twitter needs to act much faster to take action on tweets that spread false information about the election. An analysis of a Trump tweet that contained misleading information about mail-in voting shows most of the spread had likely already occurred by the time Twitter stepped in. (Election Integrity Partnership)
Governing
⭐ Multiple threads on Facebook and Reddit encouraged militiamen to head to Kenosha, Washington, ostensibly to protect local businesses from protesters. In some cases, the discussions encouraged acts of violence. The conspiracy website InfoWars amplified the call to arms. The Digital Forensic Research Lab reports:
Approximately 13 hours prior to the shootings, a Facebook page that has since been removed by the platform actively solicited armed individuals to protect neighborhoods that evening. At 10:44 a.m. local time, the administrator of the “Kenosha Guard” page asked if any members were willing to “take up arms and defend out [sic] City tonight from the evil thugs.” They continued, “Nondoubt [sic] they are currently planning on the next part of the City to burn tonight!” The page also circulated a now-deleted event RSVP titled “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property.” It would eventually garner more than 300 RSVPs, with an additional 2,300 people interested in attending.
See also Facebook’s Brian Fishman on what the company has found so far on the Kenosha shooting.
In January, the 17-year-old charged with killing two people and injuring another in Kenosha, Washington appeared in the front row at a Donald Trump rally. His social media presence is filled with him posing with weapons, posting “Blue Lives Matter,” and supporting Trump for president. (Ellie Hall, Amber Jamieson, Tasneem Nashrulla and Kadia Goba / BuzzFeed)
The technocratic language Facebook uses in its takedown numbers hides the fact that the platform helped create the very problem it’s talking about solving. Every time Facebook releases these numbers, it is asking us to think about all the people the company didn’t harm, this author says. (Chris Gilliard / OneZero)
A meaningful percentage of Americans are living in an alternate reality powered by a completely separate universe of news and information. The phenomenon was on full display at this week’s Republican National Convention. (Charlie Warzel / The New York Times)
A coalition of voting rights and watchdog groups is suing the Trump administration over its Section 230 executive order. The groups say the order is “fundamentally incompatible with the First Amendment” and is meant to limit voters’ right to receive information about the election. (Issie Lapowsky / Protocol)
Rep. David Cicilline, the Democrat leading the investigation into the tech giants, is poised to deliver recommendations as soon as next month. One possibility might be a Glass-Steagall law for tech platforms, which would prohibit them them from running a platform and competing on it at the same time. (David McLaughlin / Bloomberg)
Government officials Investigators building an antitrust case against Google are investigating whether the company engages in tying: the practice of bundling different products together in a way that can block out competitors and give the seller an unfair advantage. (Gerrit De Vynck and Mark Bergen / Bloomberg)
US companies operating in China say Trump’s WeChat ban could hurt their ability to effectively communicate with staff and local authorities. More than a dozen firms, including Apple, Walmart, and Ford, have approached the White House in recent weeks to voice their concerns that the order could extend into China. (Liza Lin / The Wall Street Journal)
Epic secured a temporary restraining order to protect the business in the short term, but the fate of the Unreal Engine is still up in the air. If Apple prevails, it could endanger an entire ecosystem of third-party tools that rely on the engine. (Nick Statt / The Verge)
Facebook filed a lawsuit against MobiBurn, an app it says harvested user data without permission. The move comes after Facebook launched an investigation into two third-party software development kits that security researchers found were collecting data without consent. (Alfred Ng / CNET)
Industry
⭐ Employees at some of the biggest businesses in the US say management has banned them from alerting colleagues or customers about COVID-19 outbreaks. Some companies have retaliated against workers who spoke out — including on social media. Josh Eidelson at Bloomberg has the story:
Workers at Amazon.com, Cargill, McDonald’s, and Target say they were told to keep Covid cases quiet. The same sort of gagging has been alleged in OSHA complaints against Smithfield Foods, Urban Outfitters, and General Electric. In an email viewed by Bloomberg Businessweek, Delta Air Lines told its 25,000 flight attendants to “please refrain from notifying other crew members on your own” about any Covid symptoms or diagnoses. At Recreational Equipment Inc., an employee texted colleagues to say he’d tested positive and that “I was told not to tell anybody” and “to not post or say anything on social media.” Amazon, McDonald’s, and Target dispute the allegations. REI says it doesn’t prohibit employees from, or punish them for, raising concerns or discussing their own health. General Electric Co. says it hasn’t threatened employees for discussing Covid-related concerns, and Delta says it hasn’t punished staff for sharing diagnoses. Smithfield Foods Inc. says its policy “is the opposite of the allegations in the complaint.” Urban Outfitters Inc. says it encourages employees to report concerns and that OSHA has found no wrongdoing on its part. Cargill Inc. says it considers health information private.
The Daily Wire, the conservative blog started by Ben Shapiro, was the top publisher on Facebook in July 2020. It was followed by CNN and Fox News. (Benedict Nicholson / NewsWhip)
Discord has grown to more than 100 million monthly active users during the pandemic, and the number of reports the Trust and Safety team has received has almost doubled. Of those, 36.6 percent had to do with harassment. The platform is also dealing with an influx of spam, according to their latest transparency report. (Discord)
There’s now an economy around viral videos of adults throwing tantrums, where clips of various Karens flipping out can be sure to get tons of traffic. The process isn’t entirely organic. (Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic)
“Criminal Minds” TikTok, where fans share videos about the CBS crime procedural, is blowing up and prolonging the the series’ lifespan. Videos marked with the #criminalminds hashtag have been viewed over 1.5 billion times on the app. (Tracy Brown / Los Angeles Times)
Disability activists are speaking out against a TikTok challenge that involves parents showing their kids photos of a disabled person and saying it’s their new teacher. “Disabled people aren’t here for your ridicule. We’re not punchlines. We’re people,” the author writes. (Melissa Blake / Refinery29)
Tens of thousands of Fortnite accounts are being sold everyday in a black market of stolen video game credentials that generates $1 billion annually. Criminals use automated tools that can check 500 accounts a second to discover if login data stolen in recent data breaches unlock any Fortnite accounts. (Olga Kharif / Bloomberg)
Things to do
Stuff to occupy you online during quarantine
Watch the trailer for The Social Dilemma, a documentary coming to Netflix next month. A variety of tech apostates and critics, including Tristan Harris, Renee DiResta, Roger McNamee, and Jaron Lanier share their concerns about life under algorithms.
Microsoft Flight Simulator players are hunting down Hurricane Laura as it approaches the US Gulf Coast. The real-time weather inside Microsoft Flight Simulator is providing a surreal spectacle for players. (Tom Warren / The Verge)
Those good tweets
Talk to us


theverge--2020-08-28--Xiaomi’s under-display camera tech will ship in smartphones next year

Xiaomi intends to start mass-producing smartphones equipped with its under-display camera technology next year , the company announced today .
This is technically the third generation of the technology Xiaomi has developed , the company says , although the first and second versions it produced have yet to find their way into a mass-market consumer device .
Xiaomi showed off the technology compared to a more traditional hole-punch notch in a video posted to its YouTube channel .
According to Xiaomi , its latest version of the technology works by allowing the selfie camera to see through the gaps in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are the red , green , and blue dots that combine to make each pixel .
Xiaomi says that the area of the display above the camera has the same density of pixels as the rest of the screen , so it can “ perfectly disguise ” the selfie camera underneath .
Xiaomi adds that the selfie camera itself should match the performance of more typical front-facing cameras .
Although it says that the screen area above the camera should match the “ brightness , color gamut , and color accuracy ” of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s blog post doesn ’ t mention whether the panel itself is OLED or LCD , or what kind of resolution we can expect it to be .
Despite Xiaomi ’ s claims that the selfie camera is perfectly disguised , there still appears to be a small square shadow visible behind the display at the 0:29 mark in its promotional video .
Images posted to Twitter by Ice Universe of the device appear to show a similar , albeit very faint , round discoloration where the selfie camera is .
Smartphone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a little while now , but so far the technology is yet to see proper commercialization .
Xiaomi and Oppo both introduced the technology back in June last year , and Oppo showed off a working prototype that month at MWC Shanghai .
However , Engadget reported at the time that the effect wasn ’ t perfect , and that the area of the screen above the camera appeared more pixelated than the rest of the screen .
Vivo had also planned to show its take on the technology in a concept phone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was cancelled due to the coronavirus .
Xiaomi might not end up being the first smartphone manufacturer to bring the technology to a mass-market device , though .
Earlier this month , ZTE said it would be launching a smartphone with an under-display camera on September 1st called the ZTE Axon 20 5G .
However , it ’ s currently unclear whether the device will launch outside of China .

Xiaomi intends to start mass-producing smartphones equipped with its under-display camera technology next year, the company announced today. This is technically the third generation of the technology Xiaomi has developed, the company says, although the first and second versions it produced have yet to find their way into a mass-market consumer device. Xiaomi showed off the technology compared to a more traditional hole-punch notch in a video posted to its YouTube channel.
According to Xiaomi, its latest version of the technology works by allowing the selfie camera to see through the gaps in the display’s sub-pixels, which are the red, green, and blue dots that combine to make each pixel. Xiaomi says that the area of the display above the camera has the same density of pixels as the rest of the screen, so it can “perfectly disguise” the selfie camera underneath. Xiaomi adds that the selfie camera itself should match the performance of more typical front-facing cameras.
A diagram from Xiaomi shows how its new under-display tech compares to other versions. Image: Xiaomi
Although it says that the screen area above the camera should match the “brightness, color gamut, and color accuracy” of the rest of the display, Xiaomi’s blog post doesn’t mention whether the panel itself is OLED or LCD, or what kind of resolution we can expect it to be.
Despite Xiaomi’s claims that the selfie camera is perfectly disguised, there still appears to be a small square shadow visible behind the display at the 0:29 mark in its promotional video.
Seen at the 29 second mark of the promotional video.
Images posted to Twitter by Ice Universe of the device appear to show a similar, albeit very faint, round discoloration where the selfie camera is.
Smartphone manufacturers have been teasing under-display cameras for a little while now, but so far the technology is yet to see proper commercialization. Xiaomi and Oppo both introduced the technology back in June last year, and Oppo showed off a working prototype that month at MWC Shanghai. However, Engadget reported at the time that the effect wasn’t perfect, and that the area of the screen above the camera appeared more pixelated than the rest of the screen. Vivo had also planned to show its take on the technology in a concept phone at MWC this year before the event was cancelled due to the coronavirus.
Xiaomi might not end up being the first smartphone manufacturer to bring the technology to a mass-market device, though. Earlier this month, ZTE said it would be launching a smartphone with an under-display camera on September 1st called the ZTE Axon 20 5G. However, it’s currently unclear whether the device will launch outside of China.


theverge--2020-08-28--OnePlus’ entry-level ‘Clover’ handset will reportedly launch later this year

OnePlus is planning to release an entry-level handset codenamed Clover for around $ 200 later this year , according to a detailed but unconfirmed report from Android Central .
We ’ ve seen snippets of information about “ Clover ” floating about the web for a while now , including a purported GeekBench score for the device .
But Android Central ’ s latest report , citing an anonymous “ insider source , ” includes a full spec-sheet and the suggestion that Clover will launch “ imminently ” in global markets , including the US .
According to Android Central @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( 1560 x 720 ) IPS LCD display , 4GB of RAM , 64GB of storage ( expandable via MicroSD ) , a Snapdragon 460 SoC , 6000mAh battery with 18W fast charging , a rear fingerprint sensor , 3.5mm headphone jack , and three camera array on the back .
This will include a 13-megapixel f/2.2 primary camera supplemented by a pair of two-megapixel f/2.4 cameras .
Notably , the Snapdragon 460 SoC is different to the Snapdragon 660 that appeared in GeekBench scores attributed to Clover .
Overall it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ noting that the combination of a 720p screen and Snapdragon 460 with a hearty 6000mAh battery should mean two-day battery life for the device .
That could be an important selling point in a crowded market .
The price is also notable .
OnePlus built its reputation offering high-end specs for less , but has been slowly broadening its range in recent years while trying to retain a reputation for premium devices .
Earlier this year it released the mid-range Nord handset , with two models available for €399 and €499 ( $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 200 phone would open the company to a much broader market , though , targeting the mass of cheap Android handsets from Chinese companies like Xiaomi .
The company did release the OnePlus X back in 2015 for a mere $ 249 , but , relative to the cheaper phones of its day , that was closer in market position to the Nord .
If these specs for Clover are legit , it ’ s a proper low-end device .
As with all leaks and reports , it ’ s best to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ salt , but we ’ ll be keeping an eye out for further rumors about Clover .
Let ’ s see if we get lucky .

OnePlus is planning to release an entry-level handset codenamed Clover for around $200 later this year, according to a detailed but unconfirmed report from Android Central.
We’ve seen snippets of information about “Clover” floating about the web for a while now, including a purported GeekBench score for the device. But Android Central’s latest report, citing an anonymous “insider source,” includes a full spec-sheet and the suggestion that Clover will launch “imminently” in global markets, including the US.
According to Android Central, Clover will have a 6.52-inch 720p (1560 x 720) IPS LCD display, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (expandable via MicroSD), a Snapdragon 460 SoC, 6000mAh battery with 18W fast charging, a rear fingerprint sensor, 3.5mm headphone jack, and three camera array on the back. This will include a 13-megapixel f/2.2 primary camera supplemented by a pair of two-megapixel f/2.4 cameras. Notably, the Snapdragon 460 SoC is different to the Snapdragon 660 that appeared in GeekBench scores attributed to Clover.
A 6000mah battery and 720p screen could deliver two-day battery life
Overall it’s an interesting package, with Android Central noting that the combination of a 720p screen and Snapdragon 460 with a hearty 6000mAh battery should mean two-day battery life for the device. That could be an important selling point in a crowded market.
The price is also notable. OnePlus built its reputation offering high-end specs for less, but has been slowly broadening its range in recent years while trying to retain a reputation for premium devices. Earlier this year it released the mid-range Nord handset, with two models available for €399 and €499 ($475 and $595). A $200 phone would open the company to a much broader market, though, targeting the mass of cheap Android handsets from Chinese companies like Xiaomi. The company did release the OnePlus X back in 2015 for a mere $249, but, relative to the cheaper phones of its day, that was closer in market position to the Nord. If these specs for Clover are legit, it’s a proper low-end device.