Technology

Facing a tidal wave of backlash following Disney’s failure to speak out against Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Disney CEO Bob Chapek formally apologized to employees today for the company’s failure to support its queer community. In an internal memo, Chapek addressed widespread criticism of Disney’s witting silence in response to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed recently by Florida’s Senate. The message was addressed to all Disney employees, “but especially our LGBTQ+ community.” “Thank you to all who have reached out to me sharing your pain, frustration and sadness over the company’s response to the Florida ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill,” Chapek wrote. “Speaking to you, reading your messages, and meeting with you have helped me better understand how painful our silence was. It is clear that this i...

Amazon’s $69.99 Smart Air Quality Monitor is the company’s first foray into the increasingly popular category of indoor air quality monitors (IAQs). And, based on my experience with the product, it’s a bandwagon-jumping move. While relatively inexpensive and helpful thanks to voice control, the Smart Monitor doesn’t add anything particularly innovative or useful to the concept of a consumer air quality monitor. An indoor air quality monitor purports to tell you all about nasties you can’t see floating around in your home (the EPA says indoor air may be two to five times more polluted than outdoor air). You may have heard about volatile organic compounds and other airborne pollutants that are common in modern homes, many of which can aggravate or contribute to respiratory diseases such as a...

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The video opens in typical Anonymous style, with 3D-rendered text and grainy Guy Fawkes masks flickering over images of street protest. “Greetings, world! We are Anonymous,” a distorted voice says. “We see the clouds of war … and it angers us.” Uploaded to YouTube and shared to the 7.8 million followers of @YourAnonNews on Twitter, this video was cited as the moment that Anonymous “declared war on Russia.” It’s a misleading claim since Anonymous is less of a standing army than an all-purpose hacktivist nom de guerre, but the move was still significant. A lot of internet bystanders were getting ready to make trouble for Russia — and they were going to use the mantle of Anonymous to do it. Anonymous is less of a standing army than an all-purpose hacktivist nom de guerre Many expected a...

TikTok is reportedly close to finalizing a deal with Oracle that would see the short-form video platform storing its US users’ data without providing access to Chinese parent company ByteDance. As first reported by Reuters, a dedicated team of engineers and cyber security workers would act as gatekeepers for US users’ data and would likely not be under TikTok’s supervision. According to a report by BuzzFeed News, the agreement is known internally at TikTok as “Project Texas,” a reference to Oracle’s Austin, Texas headquarters. The company will put in place new controls that restrict access to US user data, which it will later recreate in Europe, BuzzFeed reported. But BuzzFeed says it’s still undecided how much access Chinese managers at the company will have to the data and the US-based t...

CASETiFY’s extensive list of collaborators grows once again this week, as it unveils its latest link up with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, more commonly referred to as: The MET. Uniting for a unique fine arts collection, the capsule integrates the art museum’s masterpieces on a line up of modern tech accessories, featuring iPhone cases made with 65% recycled material, as well as wireless chargers, AirPod cases and more. The collection includes works from Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Utagawa Hiroshige, and Katsushika Hokusai, as well as designs featuring the current and previous Met logos. You can sign up for the waitlist now, while the full collection is set to drop globally on March 25 via the CASETiFY webstore. In other news, CASETiFY also recently dropped a...

Google and Meta are being investigated by antitrust regulators in the EU and UK over “Jedi Blue” — a deal between the two firms that critics say allowed them to block smaller tech companies from gaining a foothold in the online ad market. In a press statement, the European Commission said it was concerned that the September 2018 agreement “may form part of efforts to exclude ad tech services competing with Google’s Open Bidding programme, and therefore restrict or distort competition in markets for online display advertising.” It’s therefore opening a formal antitrust investigation. The UK’s Competition Market Authority said it was also investigating the deal, with CMA chief Andrea Coscelli stating: “We’re concerned that Google may have teamed up with Meta to put obstacles in the way of co...

Code Verify is a new browser extension from WhatsApp parent company Meta that aims to improve the security of WhatsApp’s web version, the company has announced. The extension works by verifying that the contents of WhatsApp’s web version haven’t been tampered with. The aim is to make it a lot more difficult for a would-be attacker to compromise data or the privacy of WhatsApp’s end-to-end encrypted messages when using the browser-based version of the service. The extension follows the launch of WhatsApp’s multi-device beta last year. This aims to make using the messaging service from devices other than your primary phone easier and more seamless. Since the feature’s launch, WhatsApp says it’s seen an increase in people accessing its service through web browsers, which present new security ...

Google, Apple, and Meta are among more than 60 companies asking Texas governor Greg Abbott to abandon recent legislation that defines gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors as “child abuse.” In a full-page advertisement published in the Friday edition of the Dallas Morning News, the companies call on leaders in Texas to “abandon efforts to write discrimination into law.” “This policy creates fear for employees and their families, especially those with transgender children, who might now be faced with choosing to provide the best possible medical care for their children but risk having those children removed by child protective services for doing so,” states the ad. “It’s not just wrong, it has an impact on our employees, our customers, their families, and our work.” The...

Razer’s trio of new products are aimed at making you sound and look your streaming best. While you’re at a desk, Razer’s $249.99 Audio Mixer offers four channels of audio control along with a variety of audio processing options, and the new $299 Key Light Chroma will keep you lit during streams. But if you’re looking for something more mobile and portable, then Razer is also launching a $99 Seiren Bluetooth lapel mic for on-the-go vlogging. The Audio Mixer offers an all-in-one interface for controlling audio during broadcasts, and competes with the likes of TC Helicon’s GoXLR. The bulk of its interface is taken up with four sliders, each controlling one audio channel, which allow you to set the relative volumes of your microphone with games, background music, and so on. There’s a mute swit...