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Last year a longstanding conspiracy was reignited, telling the tale of how your smartphone is listening to your conversations and delivering targeted ads, but it still isn't true and the way you actually get your ads is much more unsettling.

We may not have the physical fight Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk childishly threatened, but the Meta boss has launched a big hit on his Twitter rival with new social media platform Threads. Should you join? We weigh up the good and the bad so far.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is laser-focused on creating VR headsets that deliver visual experiences that are indistinguishable from reality, and has shown off some extraordinary prototypes of next-gen hardware to highlight the massive challenges ahead.

Meta has unveiled the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC), a new supercomputer that’s among the fastest in the world. And it’ll only get faster – by the end of the year it should rank number one, with computing power on the exascale.

Facebook recently rebranded as Meta, with an eye toward the development of VR/AR tech. In one of its first projects since the announcement, it's collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University on the development of a touch-sensitive electronic skin.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that the company is rebranding itself as Meta as it focuses its energy on its next great gamble: creating the backbone of an immersive VR/AR "Metaverse" it sees as the next evolution of the Web.

Although fiber optic internet cable has many advantages over metal cable, it frequently has to be distributed underground – this limits its usability. Facebook, however, has developed a robot that could wrap the cable around existing power lines.

Facebook is hoping that it can succeed where others have failed, and use its massive global presence to make smart glasses a worldwide hit, partnering with Ray-Ban to launch a pair of photo/video-capturing glasses called Ray-Ban Stories.

Facebook has taken the unusual step of revealing its next-gen augmented reality gear at a working prototype stage, including a staggering neuro-motor controller that reads nerve impulses in your wrist at single-neuron resolutions.

The original Oculus Quest was a VR game-changer, and the new Quest 2 offers significant upgrades in power, memory, graphics, resolution, framerate and 3D cinematic audio, as well as being smaller and lighter. It's also a heck of a lot cheaper.

If virtual reality headgear is going to start gaining more mass appeal, making these wearables as light and as unobtrusive as possible is really going to help – and Facebook just unveiled some VR specs which look similar to a regular pair of glasses.

Video conferencing calls have quickly become a mainstay of socializing in 2020, and now Facebook is throwing its sizeable hat in the ring with a new service called Messenger Rooms, which will be able to accommodate up to 50 people.