Technology

Three ex-Google employees claim that Google has a contractual obligation to abide by its well-known “don’t be evil” policy, and they are suing the company for allegedly terminating them for calling out Google’s “evil” doings, via NPR. “Don’t be evil” has been a part of Google’s Code of Conduct since the early 2000s The former workers Sophie Waldman, Rebecca Rivers, and Paul Duke were fired — in addition to a fourth employee, Laurence Berland — in November 2019 for allegedly violating the company’s data security policies, however, they claim they didn’t leak any confidential information. Earlier this year, the acting head of the National Labor Relations Board said that Google “arguably violated” US labor laws by firing the three employees, alleging that Google terminated the employees in re...

Twitter will now let private individuals request takedowns of pictures or videos featuring them. The company announced the change this morning, extending an existing ban on private information to cover media. It’s aimed at preventing harassment or invasions of privacy and includes exceptions for posts that are “shared in the public interest or add value to public discourse.” “Sharing personal media, such as images or videos, can potentially violate a person’s privacy, and may lead to emotional or physical harm,” reads a Twitter Safety blog post announcing the change. “The misuse of private media can affect everyone, but can have a disproportionate effect on women, activists, dissidents, and members of minority communities.” Twitter will evaluate complaints by the subject of a picture or vi...

On Black Friday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sent an anxious email to his company’s employees, urging them to work over the weekend on SpaceX’s Raptor engine line and describing the production situation as a “crisis.” In the email, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge, Musk argued that the company faces a “genuine risk of bankruptcy” if production doesn’t increase to support a high flight rate of the company’s new Starship rocket next year. The Raptor is SpaceX’s massive methane engine that will be used to propel the company’s next-generation launch system, called Starship. SpaceX plans to use Starship to take people to deep space, and in April, NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to develop Starship as a lunar lander to transport astronauts to the Moon’s surface as early as 2025. Sp...

The UK’s competition regulator has officially ruled that Facebook parent company Meta’s acquisition of Giphy should be unwound, a year and a half after the social media giant first said it was acquiring the popular GIF-making and sharing website. In a press release, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said that it had come to the decision after its investigation found an acquisition could harm competition between social media platforms, and that its concerns “can only be addressed by Facebook selling Giphy in its entirety to an approved buyer.” The CMA said the acquisition could be used to deny or limit other platforms’ access to Giphy GIFs and drive more traffic to Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. It also raised concerns that it could be used to require other platforms to provid...

The BBC is finally bringing its iPlayer app to the PS5 in the UK today, more than a year after the console’s original release. Brits have been waiting patiently for BBC iPlayer on the PS5, especially as the app is already available on more than 15,000 devices, including Xbox Series X / S consoles. The BBC iPlayer app is now available in the media tab on the PS5 home screen, and it includes support for streaming 4K content from the service. “From today, PS5 owners can add the BBC iPlayer app by going to the Media tab on the PS5 home screen and selecting BBC iPlayer from the All Apps section,” explains Neil Hall, head of product at BBC iPlayer. “This will add BBC iPlayer to the apps library and make it available to use direct from the PlayStation home screen.” The iPlayer app for PS5 arrives...

Rocket League Sideswipe, a mobile version of the popular car-based soccer game, is now available on iOS and Android. The game started rolling out on November 15th in Oceania, but is now available worldwide, albeit in a “pre-season” mode ahead of Season 1’s kickoff at an unannounced later date, according to 9to5Google. The free to play game, which was first announced in March, is a simplified version of the original Rocket League released in 2015. The biggest change is that the mobile version is played in 2D, rather than offering a fully three-dimensional stadium to drive around. You control your car with a virtual joystick on the left side of the screen, while buttons on the right handle jumping and boost. with touch controls. Unlike in regular Rocket League, the car’s boost auto-regenerat...

iRobot has released a holiday-themed update for its latest robot vacuum cleaners to help them handle the cleaning demands of Christmas trees. The j7 and j7 Plus robovacs can also now identify and avoid shoes and socks. The festive trees, shoes, and socks feature builds upon iRobot’s latest navigation and control software, which first released in August last year. This software uses machine vision to identify furniture and specify “clean zones.” For example, you might have a dining table you want a Roomba to specifically clean under after chaotic family meals. There are also “keep out zones” which a Roomba might suggest avoiding, like the area under a TV stand filled with cables for it to get caught on. Mapping data can now be transferred from robot to robot So when it comes to Christmas tr...

As the year comes to an end, YouTube has compiled a list of their topmost trending videos of 2021. While the world continues to grapple with the effects of COVID-19, viral content still found its way to the forefront of pop culture. Making its wait to No. 1 in top trending videos in the U.S. is MrBeast‘s “I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive.” Dream’s “Minecraft Speedrunner VS 5 Hunters” takes second, Mark Rober’s “Glitterbomb Trap Catches Phone Scammer (who gets arrested)” is up next and in fourth is NFL’s “The Weeknd’s FULL Pepsi Super Bowl LV Halftime Show.” MrBeast has also landed himself in the No. 1 spot for top creator in the U.S. Dream lands in fifth and Rober in seventh in this category. Others on the list include Dhar Mann, SSSniperWolf and CoryxKenshin. Having just rolled out YouTube S...

Hours after news of fashion designer Virgil Abloh‘s death, Fred Ehrsam revealed in a tweetstorm that the late artist was helping him launch a DAO and a slew of NFTs. Ehrsam’s tweet reveals that prior to his death, Abloh was exploring options in launching a DAO, social token as well as NFTs. He was also interested in entering Web3 to “change the balance of power in favor of creators.” In the tweet, Ehrsam shared, “Virgil Abloh was a pioneer in music, art, and fashion. Most people don’t know he was also ahead of the curve on Web3.” Ehrsam also posted a link to a document that outlined Abloh’s vision for DAO. The project, which is titled “Skyscraper,” includes additional details that include launching the social token and forming a partnership with Zora, while also designing NFTs. As a part o...

Music superstars BLACKPINK and lifestyle brand CASETiFY have teamed up to deliver their first ever collaboration. Comprised of limited edition products and customizable accessories, the collection features the Impact Case adorned in fan-favorite songs and lyrics and the exclusive BLACKPINK Ticket Case, which resembles a concert ticket stub with a printed autograph by either Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé or Lisa. Meanwhile, BLINKs can customize the “In Your Area Case” with their own personalized world-tour all-access pass and the “Photobooth Case” allowing fans to insert their own photos from concerts. In addition, BLINKs can find designs that include a matching range of sticker-style and band logos for the AirPods, AirPods Pro, Apple Watch bands, MagSafe wallets, wireless chargers, grip st...

FIFA, the global governing body of the sport variously known as football and soccer, is trialling new technology that tracks players’ limbs to detect whether they’re in an offside position. The system will be employed at the 2021 Arab Cup, which kicks off today in Qatar, the host of next year’s World Cup. FIFA calls the system “semi-automatic offside technology.” It involves a camera setup installed on the roof of the stadium, with limb data extracted from the video and sent to the match officials’ operating room so the offside line can be calculated in real time. The BBC reports that 10 to 12 cameras collect up to 29 data points for each player 50 times a second. In soccer, a player is offside if the ball is passed to them with fewer than two opposing players (usually including the goalke...

On Black Friday, I introduced you to an extremely curated selection of gaming PCs that might actually be good value for the money and deliver serious GPU oomph at a time when those GPUs are incredibly expensive and hard to find. Let’s do it again for Cyber Monday, shall we? RTX 3080 Ti — $2,400 If you’re looking for Nvidia’s top gaming card — because while the RTX 3090 exists, it’s overkill — HP’s Omen 30L is perhaps the best all-around prebuilt deal. There’s one specific system you can nab for $2,399 with the powerful 4K graphics card and a powerful Core i7-11700K chip, and it doesn’t skimp on the memory or storage this time around: you get 32GB of RAM, a 512GB solid-state drive, and a 2TB hard drive, all powered by an 800W Gold PSU. Sadly, HP’s coupon code doesn’t work on this rig, but a...