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Wednesday, 30 June 2021
Android users will soon be able to carry a COVID vaccine card on their phones
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Judge blocks Florida’s social media law
A Florida internet law is on hold while a lawsuit contesting it continues. Judge Robert Hinkle has issued a preliminary injunction blocking nearly all of SB 7072, a controversial and sweeping regulation of social media platforms.
“The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest,” Hinkle wrote his order. Moreover, the law “discriminates on its face among otherwise identical speakers,” partly thanks to an eyebrow-raising exemption for companies that operate a theme park. That raises the bar for evaluating whether the law violates the First Amendment — and in Hinkle’s estimation, it...
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Google is building support for digital COVID vaccine cards into Android
Google is opening up Android’s built-in passes system to let Android users store a digital vaccine card, which it calls a COVID Card, on their phone. The feature will initially roll out in the US, and it will rely on support from healthcare providers, local governments, or other organizations authorized to distribute COVID vaccines. The feature will also support storing COVID test results.
For vaccinations, your COVID Card will show info on when you were vaccinated and which vaccine you received, according to a Google support page. The card can be saved from your healthcare provider’s app or website as well as from texts or emails sent to you.
Google recommends that you add a shortcut to the card on your home screen and will offer the...
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Save up to 35% on Amazfit smartwatches, and more fitness tracker deals
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Twitter now lets you set a security key as your only two-factor authentication method
In March, Twitter said it would soon let you use a security key as your only two-factor authentication method, and on Wednesday, it announced that feature was live on both mobile and web.
Being able to use a security key as one of your two-factor authentication methods isn’t new, but now you can make it the only one, if you want to. Physical security keys have advantages over other two-factor methods like an authenticator app or SMS because they don’t rely on a code that a bad actor could intercept.
Now security keys can be your one and only two-factor authentication method on mobile and web.
— Twitter Support...
Learn more about how security keys can protect your account from attacks: https://t.co/Ta7uQSFhi6 pic.twitter.com/aPDOnbRtVk
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The best Verizon deals: Buy a 5G phone and get a second one for free
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Slack launches Huddles, Discord-like audio calls you can hop in and out of
Slack gets new features born out of the pandemic
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Windows 11 is a new and refreshing approach to an old and familiar home
Microsoft’s first Windows 11 preview looks promising
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The sound of neurons firing
Looking through a microscope, doctoral candidate Simón(e) Sun takes a tiny glass pipette and gently attaches it to a neuron in a petri dish. She’s taking recordings of synaptic activity, the electrochemical signals neurons use to communicate with each other. The data Sun gathers will be used to understand microprocesses in the brain.
It will also be turned into music.
Bridging science and art, Sun wrote a computer program that takes her data and converts it into song. And the ethereal MIDI sounds aren’t just nice to listen to — they can actually teach us a lot about how the brain works.
Sun is studying something called “homeostatic plasticity,” which is how neurons regulate their activity. Her research has broad implications for the...
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Watch Virgin Orbit launch its first commercial mission
Virgin Orbit is gearing up for its debut commercial mission from Southern California, five months after the company first reached orbit during a January test flight. Seven satellites from three different countries are loaded onto a rocket that will blast off in midair from Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 less than an hour after the plane departs the Mojave Air and Space Port.
Take off of the carrier aircraft, the modified Boeing plane named Cosmic Girl, is expected for 9:50AM ET. About an hour later, a 70-foot-long two-stage rocket called LauncherOne will ignite its single engine and take off from under the plane’s left wing over the Pacific ocean, zooming out of Earth’s atmosphere. The Netherlands’ first military satellite, three...
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DAZN will stream UEFA Women’s Champions League free on YouTube
Sports streaming service DAZN announced today that it has acquired exclusive rights to stream the UEFA Women’s Champions League. As part of the deal, an overwhelming majority of the matches it streams over the next four seasons will be available for free on its YouTube channel.
DAZN — best known in the US as a hub for boxing events — expanded to over 200 countries in December. It’s backed by billionaire Len Blavatnik who aspires to make DAZN the “Netflix of sport.” Former Disney exec Kevin Mayer joined DAZN as chairman in March to help make that happen, after Mayer abruptly quit TikTok due to Trump’s meddling. While at Disney, Mayer led the development of the wildly successful Disney Plus service and was widely believed to be Bob Iger’s...
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Sony’s WH-1000XM3 are a great deal at $190
There’s a fantastic discount happening on the previous generation Sony WH-1000XM3 wireless, noise-canceling headphones at Best Buy. Originally $350 (but usually around $250 or so these days), you can get them for $190 new. While these lack some niceties found in the newer XM4 model (concurrent Bluetooth connections, auto play / pause when you remove them or put them on), the package is overall similar in terms of nailing the fundamentals. These have great battery life, USB-C charging, among the best noise cancellation effect around, and sound quality that’s tough to beat at this price. In addition, these come with a zip-up case that makes them easy to stow. I bought these in 2018 and am still patting myself on the back for that decision.
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Poll: What would it take for you to leave your current smartphone brand?
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Daily Authority: LG’s mini-LED TVs coming in July, and more
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Hundreds of users sue Korean carriers over disappointing 5G service
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Deal: Boost your security with 50% off a Google Nest Secure Alarm Kit
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Another Galaxy Z Fold 3 leak gives us plenty more renders to look at
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LG’s Mini LED TVs to release in the US starting in July
LG’s new range of Mini LED TVs, which it’s branding “QNED,” are releasing worldwide starting next month, the company has announced. The lineup consists of three sets, the 8K QNED99 and QNED95, and the 4K QNED90, ranging in size from 65- to 86-inches. LG says the TVs will launch first in North America, with additional regions following “in the weeks ahead.”
Mini LED is a relatively new kind of display technology which uses an array of thousands of tiny LEDs as a screen’s backlight. Because there are so many (up to 30,000 in the case of the 86-inch QNED99), they can create a sharper contrast between light and dark areas of an image. LG says the technology, which has previously been used on some TVs from TCL as well as Apple’s latest...
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You told us: Most of you say you would’ve bought the canceled LG Velvet 2 Pro
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Realme Buds Q2 review: Active noise-cancelling made affordable
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Yes, Windows 11 was just ported to a six-year-old smartphone
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Xiaomi’s new flagship laptop packs an OLED screen, Intel 11th Gen CPUs
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Tuesday, 29 June 2021
Apple isn’t backing down from its hybrid work model, according to internal note
Apple isn’t backing down from its hybrid work model that will require most employees to return to the office three days a week starting in early September. Fully remote positions will be extremely limited.
“We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,” said Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people, in a video recording viewed by The Verge. “If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person.”
The news comes nearly a month after Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out an email telling employees the company was rolling out a new work...
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Zoom acquires an AI company building real-time translation
Zoom has announced that it’s acquiring a company known as Kites (short for Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions), which has worked on creating real-time translation and transcription software. Zoom says the acquisition is a move to help it make communicating with people who speak different languages easier, and that it’s looking to add translation capabilities to its video conferencing app.
According to its site, Kites began at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and its technology was originally developed to act as in-classroom translation for students who needed help understanding the English or German their professors were lecturing in.
Zoom already has real-time transcriptions, but it’s limited to people who are talking in...
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Roku launches its new originals with a Demi Lovato talk show
The first of a dozen-plus Roku Originals to premiere on the Roku Channel will kick off July 30th with The Demi Lovato Show, a series that had originally been slated for a debut on Quibi.
The show will now launch as Roku’s first “original” to land on the Roku Channel, the platform’s free and ad-supported streaming offering. While originally intended for Quibi, the show will be brand new to audiences when it arrives on the Roku Channel this week. Each episode will be 10 minutes long, feature a celebrity guest, and will cover topics as wide-ranging as UFOs, activism, mental health, gender identity, and police reform.
In a statement, Lovato said that they have “never been one to shy away from speaking candidly about things.” The show had...
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WhatsApp’s Spanish language content moderators push for equal pay in internal letter
WhatsApp’s Spanish language content moderators and customer service representatives are pushing the company for equal pay, according to an internal letter obtained by The Verge. They say they’ve been excluded from a $2 per hour premium paid to other bilingual contractors. The workers are employed by Accenture, a third-party contracting firm, in Austin, Texas.
“For several years now, Accenture, Facebook, and Whatsapp have denied equal treatment and pay to Spanish language Contingent Workers,” employees say in the letter. “It is an insult for companies like Facebook and Accenture to publicly champion diversity, but yet fail to deliver this to its own workers.” Accenture classifies much of its workforce as contingent, meaning employees are...
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Sen. Warren calls for ‘meticulous’ review of Amazon’s MGM acquisition
Senator Elizabeth Warren is calling on the Federal Trade Commission for a thorough review of Amazon’s bid to acquire MGM, arguing that the deal could harm consumers and may have anticompetitive effects in the streaming space and beyond.
In a letter addressed to newly sworn-in FTC chair Lina Khan and shared exclusively with The Verge, Warren urged the FTC to specifically and closely examine “the possible anticompetitive effects this deal will have on streaming services and entertainment products in addition to the broader impacts that this transaction may have on workers, small businesses, and competition overall as Amazon—which already dominates numerous markets—accelerates its aggressive monopolistic behavior.”
The FTC is said to be r...
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United’s latest jets will offer Bluetooth for in-flight entertainment
United Airlines is adding a long-awaited feature to the in-flight entertainment seatback screens of its new Boeing 737 Max 8 jets — support for Bluetooth headphones. The company is making the upgrade as part of “United Next”, a new plan to expand and modernize its fleet with what it says are larger, fuel-efficient jets and a more comfortable in-flight experience.
I haven’t flown in the last two years — for reasons that are hopefully obvious — but the thing that grinds most of my past flying experience to a halt is dealing with the bizarre two-pronged audio jacks airplanes use for inflight audio. Having headphones with a 3.5mm audio jack isn’t hard, but it doesn’t reflect the Bluetooth audio lifestyle, Apple, and plenty of other tech...
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Daily Authority: Windows 11 first preview out but controversy heats up, and more
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Nothing’s debut wireless earbuds will be announced on July 27
Tech startup Nothing will announce its debut pair of true wireless earbuds, the Nothing Ear (1), at 9AM ET on July 27th, the company’s founder Carl Pei announced today. The launch comes around a month later than the June launch window Nothing previously announced, after Pei tweeted that the company was delaying the launch because it had “a few things left to finalize.” Carl Pei is best known as one of the co-founders of OnePlus, a company he parted ways with last year.
Details about the Nothing Ear (1) are thin, but the company has teased several details about them over the past few months. We know they’ll have a “stripped-down aesthetic” featuring transparent materials in their construction, and that they’ve been designed in...
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Google Messages will auto-delete OTPs and sort like Gmail, but only in India
Google is updating its Messages app in India to allow it to delete one-time passwords (OTPs) automatically, to stop the single-use codes from clogging up your inbox, the company has announced. Alongside it, Google also says the app will be able to sort messages into categories, keeping your personal correspondence away from notifications about bank transactions and special offers.
As someone that almost exclusively uses WhatsApp for personal communication, my phone’s default texting app is typically a graveyard of six-digit codes, which by design become useless mere minutes after they’re received. Having the ability to automatically delete them after 24 hours should make Messages less cluttered and more usable.
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Amazon Music Unlimited: Get up to 6 months of Disney Plus for free
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Leak suggests Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 price may undercut Buds Pro
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Google launches new search tool to help combat food insecurity
Google announced a new website designed to be a “one-stop shop” for people with food insecurity. The “Find Food Support” site includes a food locator tool powered by Google Maps which people can use to search for their nearest food bank, food pantry, or school lunch program pickup site in their community.
Google is working with non-profit groups like No Kid Hungry and FoodFinder, as well as the US Department of Agriculture, to aggregate 90,000 locations with free food support across all 50 states — with more locations to come.
The new site is a product of Google’s newly formed Food for Good team, formerly known as Project Delta when it was headquartered at Alphabet’s X moonshot division. Project Delta’s mission is to...
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Windows 11 includes new Dynamic Refresh Rate feature to save laptop battery life
Microsoft is introducing a new Dynamic Refresh Rate (DRR) feature in Windows 11 that’s designed to save laptop battery life and boost refresh rates when they’re really needed.
A number of laptops now ship with 120Hz and beyond displays, which make Windows feel a lot smoother across scrolling, animations, and inking. While the added smoothness feels great, running at higher refresh rates takes its toll on battery life.
In Windows 10 you have to decide between 60Hz and 120Hz on a laptop, and it’s a static choice. Microsoft is now building DRR into Windows 11, which will allow a laptop to dynamically adjust its refresh rate. “This means that Windows 11 will seamlessly switch between a lower refresh rate and a higher refresh rate based on...
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A carrier may have injected ads into Google’s 2FA texts, and that’s just silly
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Google beefs up Play Store developer verification in response to scams
Google is working to enhance the integrity of the Play Store by adding new restrictions and safeguards to developer accounts.
Google Play Store developers will soon have to verify their email address and phone number and provide extra details like a physical address in an attempt to increase security and ensure that accounts are being created by ‘real people,’ the company has announced. Developers will also be required to use two-step verification. The search giant says it’s making the changes “to keep Google Play safe and secure and to better serve our developer community,” and to “make sure that every account is created by a real person with real contact details.”
The Record reports that the announcement coincides with the emergence...
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Next Samsung One UI update might not be the big one you were expecting
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Google Messages gets two handy features to make sense of your inbox
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Samsung rolls out latest Galaxy S10 series update to US carrier variants
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You thought 108MP was too much? Xiaomi could be working on a 200MP flagship
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Monday, 28 June 2021
Samsung now promises 5 years of security updates for some flagships
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Nikon’s Z FC is a film camera revival in mirrorless form
Nikon is going all-in on the retro aesthetic with its latest Z-series mirrorless camera. The company says the new Z FC, officially styled “Z fc,” is designed specifically to evoke its FM2 film SLR from the ‘80s, with dedicated dials for settings like shutter speed, exposure compensation, and ISO.
The approach is similar to the Nikon DF, a retro-style full-frame DSLR that Nikon released in 2013. But the DF was much larger than the film cameras it was inspired by. The Z FC has a 20.9-megapixel APS-C sensor (and of course no SLR mirror and prism), which means the resulting camera is far more compact and looks a lot closer to something like an FM2.
Beyond the exterior, the Z FC is a modern camera with broadly similar specs to...
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LG’s C1 and G1 OLEDs get even better at gaming with 120Hz Dolby Vision
With Dolby Vision gaming HDR technology available on Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, some TV owners have noticed that suddenly there’s a new setting to worry over. While some HDMI 2.1-equipped 4K displays could handle 120Hz, and some can support Dolby Vision for gaming, at first there weren’t any that could do both things at once.
Now LG has confirmed it’s the first manufacturer with Dolby Vision HDR at 4K 120Hz support on some of its TVs, just a couple of weeks after owners noticed it arriving in updates. The 03.15.27 firmware enables the feature on C1 and G1 2021 OLED TVs, and today LG says support is on the way for other premium TVs in its 2021 lineup.
Additional premium models in LG’s 2021 TV lineup such as OLED Z1 series, QNED...
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Parler reportedly refused to ban Trump’s critics as part of discussions to bring him onboard
The alternative social network Parler and representatives of former president Donald Trump were reportedly considering an idea to make Trump an active member of the platform after he left office, but Parler apparently pushed back on one key part of the proposed arrangement: the platform did not want to ban Trump’s detractors, according to an excerpt of Michael Wolff’s upcoming book about the last days of Trump’s presidency published in New York Magazine.
Here’s what was going on, according to Wolff:
One curious point of consideration for the [Trump] family [the morning of January 6th] — prescient of the events that would shortly unfold — was a follow-up to a discussion initiated some months before by aides and family. Trump...
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Juul settles with North Carolina in first teen vaping lawsuit
Juul has agreed to settle its first state lawsuit over deceptive business practices with North Carolina, a move that will limit the vaping company’s marketing claims and placement of products in stores.
Under the settlement, Juul will no longer use marketing strategies geared toward young people, including most social media marketing campaigns, advertising near schools, and sponsoring sporting events or concerts. The company also cannot use models under 35 years old for advertisements in the state, and it’s required that Juul products are sold behind the counters of stores, according to The News & Observer. Juul will also pay a $40 million fine to the state.
“North Carolina is now the first state in the nation to hold Juul accountable...
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Microsoft Office is getting a new design and a native 64-bit Arm version for Windows 11
Microsoft is announcing that the next version of Office for Windows 11 will have a native 64-bit Arm version, for improved performance on large or picture-filled documents, and support for 64-bit add-ins. The new version of Office is currently in beta, available to Office Insiders.
Microsoft also announced a redesign of Office, which you can see above and below. While it uses a similar design to Windows 11, it’ll be available whether you're running the Windows 11 Preview or Windows 10. In addition to the new design, Office will also adapt to your Windows light / dark mode, so you should be able to avoid the experience of opening a document and having it blast light into your eyes at night.
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Three new Motorola 2021 phones leak with one having an SD870 chipset
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