Technology

Google employees who haven’t been vaccinated could be put on forced leave and then let go from the company if they fail to follow its COVID-19 rules, according to an internal memo obtained by CNBC. The policy will reportedly affect employees that would have fallen under the jurisdiction of President Biden’s vaccine mandate, which is currently facing challenges in the Senate and court system. According to the memo, Google gave its employees until December 3rd to upload proof of vaccination or receive approval for a medical or religious exemption. The company says that anyone who doesn’t do either of those things by January 13th will be placed on a 30-day paid administrative leave. If they’re still not in compliance after the 30 days, they could face unpaid leave for up to six months and the...

Space Runners — the first dedicated fashion brand for the Metaverse — has just announced a new NBA Champions partnership with Kyle Kuzma and Nick Young. This collaboration will see the launch of the two basketball players’ sneakers in NFT form. Each minted sneaker will have different traits like speed, stability, and power which will be applicable to Space Runner’s upcoming Metaverse game. On top of Kyle Kuzma and Nick Young, the Space Runner’s team has also signed on the New Orleans Pelicans as official partners as well as Devon Dotson of the Chicago Bulls. With close to 90,000 followers on Twitter, the Space Runners name has caught the attention of Meta — Facebook’s new name — with its ambitions of expanding into artists and brands on top of athletes. Perks of owning a Space Runners NFT ...

Though we’re still (potentially) nine months away from Apple‘s next iPhone release, new rumors have surfaced once again about the upcoming models, which now suggest that there’ll be a big camera and memory upgrade. As per MacRumors, tech analyst Jeff Pu has now revealed in a research note with Haitong International Securities that both models of the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro will boast a triple-lens rear camera configuration with its wide-angle lens working in tandem with a 48-megapixel sensor, while its ultra-wide and telephoto lenses will pair with 12-megapixel sensors. The suggestion also matches those from TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said back in April that the device will also be able to record videos in 8K. On top of revamped cameras, Pu says that the iPho...

Instagram has reportedly rallied from a turbulent year to now reach two billion monthly active users. According to CNBC, sources from the Meta-owned business have revealed that Instagram has managed to reach the new milestone just three years after reaching the one billion mark back in June of 2018, an amount that took the platform eight years to accumulate. Unfortunately, since the announcement of those figures, the company itself has not revealed specific user counts in its financials, but one of its employees speaking under anonymity confirmed that Instagram managed to hit the two billion mark just a week before Facebook rebranded to Meta back in October. Despite the impressive figures, as the report points out, the social media platform’s success in figures may actually come as a ...

Bored Ape Yacht Club has teamed up with Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands to develop a play-to-earn blockchain game utilizing Yuga Labs’ popular NFTs. Details about the new game have not yet been provided, though the game is expected to release in Q2 of 2022 and will feature play-to-earn mechanics. “We’re excited to work with Animoca Brands to grow the BAYC universe and expand the utility and benefits offered to all Bored Ape NFT holders,” said a Yuga Labs spokesperson in a statement. “NFTs have emerged as a store of culture,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands. “There are very few icons that are able to represent the surging world of NFTs as powerfully as Bored Ape Yacht Club, which is why we, as a group and in aggregate, hold a significant number of them.” Bor...

Climate change continues to create “cascading disruptions” in the Arctic as the region experiences rapid warming, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) writes in its 16th annual Arctic Report Card released earlier today. Pulling together the most recent data on temperature trends, sea ice cover, and more gathered in 2020 and 2021, this year’s Arctic Report Card includes 111 contributing writers from 12 countries, who detail the transformation taking place across the far north as a result of human-caused climate change. That includes dramatic sea ice losses, rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and exceptionally warm autumns. The Arctic experienced its warmest autumn on record between October and December 2020. None of these observations are terribly surprising at thi...

Animal Crossing Monopoly Perhaps the most wholesome evolution of this capitalism-driven franchise, the adorable veneer of Animal Crossing might just be enough to prevent any board-flipping tantrums when you land on Boardwalk for the eighth time. Animal Crossing Monopoly replaces all the properties with adorable fruit, fossils, and bugs. Even the classic tokens have been replaced by chunky Animal Crossing personas.Price: $20 Amazon GameStop Target Razer DeathAdder Essential On the surface, this parsed-down version of Razer’s storied DeathAdder gaming mouse is virtually indistinguishable from its more expensive counterparts and shares the same curved, snakelike chassis and responsive buttons as other models. The only true difference is the 6,400 DPI sensor, which is less sensitive than...

Six more women who work at Tesla’s Fremont, California factory and service center have filed lawsuits against the company, according to a report from The Washington Post. Each woman has filed a separate lawsuit in the California Superior Court in Alameda County, alleging that they’re subject to a culture of sexual harassment at the workplace. These new lawsuits come not even a month after two other women filed suit against the company with similar allegations. One woman claims she told HR about the issue but was only moved to a different work area The six women claim that their male coworkers frequently make lewd comments towards their bodies or clothes, as well as engage in abusive behavior like catcalling and inappropriate touching. Some women even went so far as to wear baggy clothing t...

Huawei was involved in building technology for labor and reeducation camps, as well as surveillance systems in China’s Xinjiang region, according to PowerPoint presentations obtained and translated by The Washington Post. The report shows some of the ways the tech giant’s work may have been involved in the persecution against ethnic minorities in the region. The Washington Post says it obtained the PowerPoints from a public Huawei site before they were taken down. According to the report, the slides included details on Huawei’s involvement with other companies in creating several systems and had metadata dating them anywhere from 2014 to 2020 (with copyright dates being listed from 2016 to 2018). Translated slide describing some of Huawei’s work in smart prisons.Image: The Washington Post ...

Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle startup based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou, China, is temporarily unable to test driverless vehicles in California after a vehicle crash led the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend the company’s testing permit. Pony.ai was one of the few companies approved to test fully autonomous vehicles without safety drivers behind the steering wheel on public roads in California. The DMV has only issued permits to seven other companies, including major operators like Waymo and Cruise. But the permit was suspended — and Pony’s name removed from the DMV’s list of permit holders — after a reported vehicle collision in Fremont, California on October 28th, the agency said in a statement. Pony has 10 Hyundai Kona vehicles registered under its driverless testing ...

Would you consider buying a $299.99 webcam? That’s the cost of Opal’s C1, which is now available to purchase on an invite-only basis. My guess is that many of you will say no. Others, who are on the never-ending quest to look good for all of those Zoom meetings, might have a list of questions in need of some really convincing answers, and rightfully so. Like, why pay this much when there are so many other more economical options, including using your phone as a webcam? And why go with newcomer Opal over legacy brands like Logitech? Opal has good answers to those questions. But having a chance to try the webcam itself was more convincing than any answer I received. The C1 aims to — and mostly succeeds at — supplying DSLR-like image quality (complete with plenty of background separation or b...

SiriusXM is facing a lawsuit from the National Association for the Deaf (NAD) and the Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) for failing to provide captioning and transcripts for “the vast majority” of its podcasts. According to the complaint, SiriusXM and its subsidiaries Pandora and Stitcher are in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and New York state law for failing to make their podcast streams accessible for Deaf and hard-of-hearing users. “Defendants’ failures to provide transcripts of their podcasts excludes deaf and hard-of-hearing persons from the critical sources of news, entertainment, educational programs, and popular culture that Defendants make available to their hearing customers, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the New York State Human Ri...