Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg sees the metaverse as a wondrous new stage of technology, filled with opportunities to work, play and communicate. You could watch an Imax movie on the moonhost a work meeting in a Pirates of the Caribbean-inspired tavern or rock out on a stage with your favorite musician.

But while you watch how the metaverse unfolds, Zuckerberg is preparing for what appears to be the fight of his life. His opponent is Apple.

During his Meta Connect conference keynote last week, Zuckerberg laid out his vision for the future, including games like Iron Man VRa suite of business productivity apps from Microsoft and a new $1,500 headset called Quest Pro, whose top feature includes sensors that can read your real-life facial expressions. Still, at several notable times in the 82-minute presentation, he also attacked Apple without saying its name.

In veiled jabs, Zuckerberg attacked Apple over everything from its secretive nature to its business model, profiting primarily off hardware rather than ads. He also attacked Apple’s “closed” ecosystem approach to app development, funneling all iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch apps through its App Store. While that approach, where apps are checked for security issues and judged against the company’s editorial standards, it has helped create massive companies like Uber and TikTok, it’s also drawn scrutiny over antitrust concerns.

“In every generation of computing, there’s been an open ecosystem and a closed ecosystem,” Zuckerberg said, referencing the tech industry’s past platform battles between PCs

Razer is finally showing off the Edge, its portable Android gaming handheld. Good news: it looks a lot better than the last time we saw it in December 2021. There’s a lot to go over with this one. The Edge will release in a Wi-Fi-only version for $399.99 in January 2023, followed by a 5G-ready version through Verizon in early 2023. It’ll support the carrier’s ultra wideband and sub-6GHz networks. Razer’s following the Steam Deck reservation model, allowing people to pay $5 to reserve an Edge.

It’s meant to be a great device for cloud game streaming through Xbox Cloud Gaming or Nvidia GeForce Now. Razer says that the Edge supports up to 144 frames per second through the Steam Link app when you’re streaming PC games locally. The Edge runs on Android 12 with Qualcomm’s G3X Gen 1 chipset, though instead of being an all-in-one handheld like the concept shown off months ago (like Logitech’s G Cloud Gaming Handheld is), it’s a 6.8-inch tablet that can be removed from its controller. That controller, by the way, is a Kishi V2 Pro, a more feature-packed version that includes haptics and a 3.5mm headphone jack. That gamepad won’t be available separately for the time being; for now, it’s only available packed in with the Edge.

The tablet

NASA’s most eagle-eyed observatory yet has done it again. The James Webb Space Telescope has returned an image of the famous “Pillars of Creation” in infrared light that’s the sharpest, most detailed portrait of the spectacular star-forming region ever seen.

The ethereal scene captures translucent columns of cool interstellar gas and dust punctuated by piercing, bright points of light. Most of these are stars, and the reddish balls of fire near the edges of the pillars are newly formed stars, according to NASA.

Don’t confuse these with the deep red, magma-like areas along the inside perimeter of a few of the pillars. This is created by the turmoil of stars that are still forming and shooting supersonic jets of material out into space where they collide with other material. In short, this is what cosmic chaos looks like.

Fortunately these epic explosions and cosmological collisions are far away, at a distance of around 6,500 light-years from Earth.

This region of the universe first achieved fame in 1995 when it was imaged by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. A follow-up campaign was done by Hubble in 2014, and plenty of other observatories have also trained their lenses on the area that lies within the Eagle Nebula.

A side-by-side comparison of the new image and Hubble’s take on the cosmic phenomenon reveals how Webb’s infrared

Telegram has updated its app with new features and visual updatesincluding the addition of voice-to-text transcription for videos, separate topics in large group chats, and “Collectible Usernames.”

Video messaging transcription can be accessed by tapping the “→A” button on the bottom-right of a video, but won’t be available for everyone — much like Telegram’s existing voice message transcription, the feature is restricted to Telegram Premium users. A Telegram Premium subscription costs $4.99 a month and comes with additional benefits such as faster downloads, no ads, and a larger file upload limit of 4GB.

Telegram has also introduced new features for free users, starting with Topics in Groups. This allows groups with over 200 members to create separate spaces that function like individual chats, with their own notifications independent from the larger Group. The set-up is similar to Discord servers that have a single overarching focus but also side channels for more specific conversations. You can test out the feature yourself in Telegram’s own public group.

Next up is Collectible Usernames, an NFT-like asset secured by the TONS of blockchain networks that can be purchased and sold via Fragment. Telegram says these vanity names can be less than five characters long and function just like regular usernames, appearing in Global Search results and generating ‘username.t.me’ and ‘t.me/username’ links that can be used outside of Telegram.