Technology

More than 35 organizations are demanding top US retailers cease using facial recognition to identify shoppers and employees in their stores, which companies have used to deter theft and identify shoplifters. The campaign is aptly named Ban Facial Recognition in Stores, and has identified stores that have committed to not using facial recognition, like Walmart, Home Depot, and Target. It is now pressuring companies currently using the technology, or those who might use it in the future. Some companies that are currently using the technology, according to the website, include Apple, Lowe’s, Albertsons, Macy’s, and Ace Hardware. Companies that might use it in the future include McDonalds, Walgreens, and 7-Eleven. A full list can be found on the website. Privacy non-profit Fight for the Future...

Disney’s Loki TV show is getting a second season, according to a scene appended to the sixth and final episode of its first season. The confirmation, first spotted by Variety, comes mid-way through the episode’s credits at the 42 minute and 48 second mark, when a stamp appears on screen which simply reads “Loki will return in season 2.” Loki is the third Marvel show to have premiered on Disney Plus, and the first to have had a second season officially confirmed. WandaVision star Elizabeth Olsen has confirmed that the show, which premiered in January this year, isn’t due to receive a second season. Meanwhile it’s currently unclear whether The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will return for a second season, especially given the show leads neatly into the upcoming fourth Captain America movie. ...

In an ongoing effort to combat misinformation on its platform, social media giant Facebook is now introducing a new feature for its group pages to designate subject experts within its communities. Group experts will function in a similar way as admins and moderators, receiving a badge next to their names as verification for other users to see their posts and comments more easily. The feature is currently available for “select groups” and can be accessed across both desktop and mobile versions of Facebook. Those who become designated as experts can also host live Q&A sessions where group members can ask questions to someone knowledgeable in the subject area. Later in the summer, it’ll also launch live audio rooms for users to dive into discussions with. “There are more than 70 million a...

Discord has purchased a company working on AI tools to detect harassment online. The company, Sentropy, monitors online networks for abuse and harassment, then offers users a way to block problematic people and filter out messages they don’t want to see. Its first product, Sentropy Protect, was initially focused on helping users clean up their Twitter feeds. The company is now shutting down its independent tools and joining Discord, where it plans to help the hugely popular chat app “expand and evolve its [trust and safety] capabilities.” It could be a good pairing. Discord has a huge network, with more than 150 million monthly users, and servers can be a real challenge to moderate. The service is made up of more than 19 million individual communities, and that scale requires the work of b...

General Motors is dropping wireless smartphone charging from some new SUVs because of the global microchip shortage. It’s the latest feature to get the axe at the company due to the low supply of semiconductors, as GM has already pulled HD radio from some models, along with auto start-stop and a fuel management module that made pickup trucks slightly cleaner and more efficient. Certain trims of the 2021 Chevy Tahoe and Suburban, as well as the 2021 GMC Yukon, made after July 12th will no longer include a wireless charging pad, as was first reported by the GM Authority blog. But GM tells The Verge that certain 2022 Buick Enclaves, Chevy Traverses, and Cadillac XT5s and XT6s made after August 2nd are also affected. Buyers of these vehicles will get a $75 credit instead of the wireless chargi...

YouTube is rolling out its new short-form video service, YouTube Shorts, in 100 countries after trialing it in select markets over the past year. Labeled as a TikTok competitor, YouTube Shorts first launched in India in September before launching a Beta version in the U.S. in March. Users can record 15-second videos using a multi-segment camera to string several clips together. There is also an option to record a video with music and audio from YouTube’s massive content library, in addition to speed controls and a countdown timer for hands-free recording. The company said in March that its YouTube Shorts player had surpassed 6.5 billion daily views globally. In its expansion, the company added new features, like the ability to add text to specific points in the video and sampling audio fro...

The Weather app on several Apple iOS versions is reportedly refusing to display the number 69 despite the fact that it marks the real temperature of a location. According to The Verge, it’s unclear if the odd ban of 69 degrees is simply a bug or an intentional move by Apple. The Weather app supposedly rounds 69 degrees up to 70 or down to 68, but the widget on the Apple home screen and the information from Weather.com — where Apple sources its data — can both still display 69 degrees. A possible reason behind the lack of 69 degrees could be a temperature conversion; Apple receives its Weather data in Celsius, and the conversion to Fahrenheit will leave it with an extra number after the decimal point. For example, 20 degrees Celsius is 68 degrees Fahrenheit, but 20 degrees Celsius is 6...

Large touchscreens are commonplace in new cars these days, and the bigger these rectangular screens get, the fewer things you can do with the hardware to really differentiate from the competition. Perhaps that’s why, in the new 2022 AMG SL Roadster, Mercedes-Benz is taking the screen out of the dashboard, anchoring it to the center console, and letting it electronically flip up and down. That’s right, Mercedes-Benz’s newest car has a flippy screen. The company said it designed the 11.9-inch portrait touchscreen this way in order to help fight glare — the AMG SL Roadster is a convertible, after all — but it’s also clearly a flashy parlor trick that seems to say, “Hey, we did something different from Tesla.” Grid View The new AMG SL Roadster also has a digital instrument cluster that’s a bit...

Google has brought an end to its effectively “unlimited” group video calls in Meet for free Gmail accounts, according to support pages spotted by 9to5Google. Now users with free accounts logging on to Meet will have group calls capped at an hour rather than the previous 24-hour meeting duration. Google’s unlimited group meeting offer was helpful because so many traditionally in-person functions moved online due to COVID-19. Not having to worry about a call cutting out or creating new meeting links meant you could leave your video call on during long family get-togethers. One-on-one calls are still unlimited Meet was opened up to non-enterprise users in April last year to better compete with Zoom, and at the time Google promised to keep unlimited meetings in place until September 30th, 2020...

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged embattled space infrastructure startup Momentus Space and its founder, Mikhail Kokorich, with allegedly misleading investors about its propulsion technology and downplaying regulators’ national security concerns associated with Kokorich, who is Russian. The SEC also charged the company, Stable Road Acquisition Corp, that was going to acquire Momentus as part of a deal to take the startup public (and sidestep the IPO process). Stable Road Acquisition Corp is a SPAC, a company that exists only to buy another company; the CEO of Stable Road, Brian Kabot, and its sponsor SRC-NI have also been charged by the SEC. Everyone except Kokorich has settled the charges with the SEC and paid a fine. “This case illustrates risks inherent to SPAC t...

Apple surprised us Tuesday by simply putting its latest iPhone accessory on sale. The $99 MagSafe Battery Pack isn’t the first power cell we’ve seen that uses Apple’s new magnetic system to connect with the iPhone 12 family (Anker offers a 5,000mAh pack with slower 5W charging for $45.99), but it is the first one from Apple and can charge at up to 15W while it’s plugged in. MacRumors and 9to5Mac point out a support document that helps answer a few questions we immediately had about the device, including confirmation that this will unlock the iPhone 12’s “secret” reverse charging feature. While iFixit didn’t spot any additional hardware to add wireless charging, FCC filings revealed the company’s plan to let you charge accessories while the iPhone 12 is plugged in and charging, complete wit...

Twitter is rolling out the ability to let you change who can reply to a tweet after you have posted it, the company announced Tuesday. You could already limit who replied to your tweets thanks to a feature rolled out widely in August, but you had to set that preference while writing the tweet — with this update, you can change who can reply at a later time, which could be a helpful way to reduce harassment. The feature will be available globally on iOS, Android, and the web. To change who can reply, click or tap the three-dot menu on a tweet and look for the option in the menu that appears. You can make it so that everyone can reply, only people you follow can reply, or only people you mention in your tweet can reply. The feature is the latest example of how Twitter is working to give user...