Twitter’s algorithms are disproportionately boosting right-leaning news outlets and conservative content, a new study by the company finds. And Twitter doesn’t really know why.

The social media giant published a blog post about its findings late last week, co-authored by Rumman Chowdury, director of software engineering, and Luca Belli, a staff machine learning researcher.

“We believe it’s critical to study the effects of machine learning (ML) on the public conversation and share our findings publicly,” the pair writes. “This effort is part of our ongoing work to look at algorithms across a range of topics.”

The study in question is a deep analysis of how Twitter’s algorithms treat political content. It covered politicians’ tweets from seven countries — Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. — along with political content from news outlets in these countries.

Twitter was able to draw some conclusions from the data collected, but more impressive is its willingness to admit so openly that it has lots left to learn.

When it comes to resurrections of ailing video game franchises, the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot is one of the better ones. It successfully took the innovative (but clunky) platforming and tank controls of the original series and translated them to a more cinematic blueprint, of the kind first established by the Uncharted series. However, as part of the series' 25th anniversary celebration, publisher Square Enix has revealed some test footage that shows that the reboot could've gone in an entirely different direction.

On the official Tomb Raider YouTube page, you can check out three videos that show off what the 2013 game might've been. In its early development, the project was apparently called Tomb Raider: Ascension, and while it seems to feature the same remote island setting as the final game, the particulars are pretty different. In a lengthy compilation of early gameplay footage, we see series protagonist Lara Croft ride a horse, muck around in a scary tomb, and battle some monsters that wouldn't look out of place in Bloodborne.

A new study published in the scientific journal Psychology of Popular Media details the effects memes can have on a person’s ability to cope with the stress of a deadly, seemingly never-ending pandemic — and wouldn’t you know it? It turns out that staring at inane images of babies and kittens is much more enjoyable and calming than ruminating on COVID-19’s societal damage.

"As the pandemic kept dragging on, it became more and more interesting to me how people were using social media, and memes in particular, as a way to think about the pandemic," said lead author, Jessica Gall Myrick, Ph.D., in a press release, adding that the team “found that viewing just three memes can help people cope with the stress of living during a global pandemic."

Water, meanwhile, remains wet.

It’s been 34 days since we published our iPhone 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max review. I loved everything about the iPhone 13 Pros except for one thing: the camera’s automatic macro mode.

The automatic camera switching ruined the iPhone 13 Pro’s shooting experience in my opinion. A month ago, Apple said: “A new setting will be added in a software update this fall to turn off automatic camera switching when shooting at close distances for macro photography and video.”

Apple just pushed out iOS 15.1 and — would you look at that! — there’s a new setting (Settings > Camera > Auto Macro) that lets you turn the annoying automatic macro/camera switching off.

With the software fix, the iPhone 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max are perfect. Just perfect. If you’ve been waiting for this as I have, I can now recommend Apple’s best iPhone.