Technology

Google is being charged with a historic €500 million ($589 million) fine from the French Competition Authority (FCA) for failing to comply with an April 2020 order to negotiate fairly with news publishers over the use of, and payment for, their articles and other content (via CNBC). News publishers gained the ability to request payment for the use of their content on third-party platforms with the passage of the European Union’s controversial Copyright Directive, which was adopted by France in 2019 and generally tries to shift power toward content producers rather than the platforms that reshare their work. Article 11 of the directive, colloquially called the “Link Tax,” gives publishers the right to ask for payment for snippets of articles and other content linked in places like Google Ne...

Nintendo Switch owners have been experiencing problems with the console’s removable Joy-Con controllers for years now, with users reporting weird joystick drifting problems that cause false inputs and have been steadily growing over time as original Switch machines grow older. Ever since a report by Kotaku from July 2019 shined a light on the Joy-Con drift issue, Nintendo has changed its policies significantly. The company will now repair drifting Joy-Con controllers for free, even if your controllers are outside the regular warranty. But Nintendo hasn’t changed the design of the controllers, and it’s still an issue today, even on the refreshed Switch models that launched last year. If you’re looking for more information on the problem, here’s the current situation: What is “Joy-Con drift”...

Facebook is introducing a new feature called “Group Experts” today, which will allow admins to designate which members are highly knowledgeable about the group’s topic. Beyond the bragging rights, Group Experts will have a badge next to their name emblazoned with the proof of their elevated status. This badge will show up on posts, comments, and in the Q&A feature. Group Experts will be selected by group administrators, and experts will only be given this extraordinary power once they have accepted the nomination. Admins can revoke the expert status, as well. Facebook is testing ways to make it easier for admins to find these experts, by prompting specific users, currently in the gaming and fitness spaces, to add which games or activities they’re knowledgeable about. Group admins can s...

Microsoft’s Windows 11 preview has been available for a couple of weeks now, but I’m still discovering new animations and details in this new OS that put a smile on my face. While the new Start menu and centered taskbar are the obvious changes in Windows 11 that you’ll notice straight away, it’s the small animations throughout the OS that really make it feel a lot more fresh and alive than ever before. Microsoft has started detailing some of the design approaches it has used for Windows 11 and its attention to detail for daily micro-interactions. That includes things like a checkbox that has an animated tick to subtly let you know when you interact with it, or a settings cog that spins when you hover over it. Plenty of buttons in Windows 11 pop with faint signs of life or bounce as you mov...

Republicans are questioning Amazon’s relationship with the Pentagon after newly released emails show that defense officials praised tech executives vying for a $10 billion contract during the Trump administration. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported on previously unreleased emails that show Pentagon officials applauding Amazon executives while the company sought out a lucrative defense contract between 2017 and 2018. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, or JEDI, set out to find a tech company that would move the Defense Department’s computer networks over to the cloud. In one instance, the Times reports that former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with executives from companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google in 2017. During this trip...

Apple has launched the MagSafe Battery Pack for its iPhone 12 lineup. One of the magnetic batteries costs $99, and you can order one right now from Apple’s website. For me, the website is showing delivery between July 22nd and July 26th. Apple has released battery cases for iPhones in the past, but the new pack attaches to the iPhone 12 phones thanks to embedded magnets. And it will work with all four of the phones in the iPhone 12 family — the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. One side of the MagSafe Battery Pack.Image: Apple While the iPhone 11 battery cases had a physical camera shortcut button, since this accessory is just an attachable pack, that means they don’t come with any other features besides giving you some extra juice for your phone. Apple says ...

Google is revising how much of a cut it takes from Stadia games in a bid to try to attract more developers. Starting on October 1st, Google will take 15 percent of sales up to $3 million through the end of 2023. [embedded content] With the change, Google seems to be trying to make its cloud gaming platform a more enticing option for developers — a proposition that has likely become much harder since the company shut down its own in-house studios. Google has also tried offering exclusive games to try to bring developers on board (which it presumably paid hefty sums to acquire), but many of those games have since been released on other platforms. The news comes as revenue shares between developers and platform holders have come under intense scrutiny as of late. Google’s change with Stadia i...

Mei Lee is an ordinary 13-year-old in the first trailer for Turning Red, the next film from Pixar — unless she gets stressed out or overexcited. Then she turns into a gigantic talking red panda in a massive explosion of pink smoke, not unlike an adorable version of The Incredible Hulk. Adding to the problem is Mei’s (Rosalie Chiang) overprotective mother, Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh), who’s seen in the trailer sneaking to watch over her at school, causing an altercation with a security guard that leads to one of Mei’s panda-sized incidents. While the initial teaser doesn’t offer too many details on what sort of misadventures Mei will have (as both a teenager and a giant panda), it does bear the distinction of being the first full-length animated Disney film to be definitively set in Canada. ...

Firefox 90 introduces the next version of SmartBlock, the browser’s tracker blocking mechanism built into its private browsing and strict modes, which now has improvements designed to prevent buttons that let you log into websites using your Facebook account from breaking, Mozilla announced on Tuesday. SmartBlock was first introduced with Firefox 87 in March, and if you aren’t familiar, here’s Mozilla’s description of how it works, from the company’s blog: SmartBlock intelligently fixes up web pages that are broken by our tracking protections, without compromising user privacy. SmartBlock does this by providing local stand-ins for blocked third-party tracking scripts. These stand-in scripts behave just enough like the original ones to make sure that the website works properly. They allow b...

We are back after our week off, and we’ve got a good one today. On this episode, I’m talking to Thomas Ingenlath, CEO of Polestar, a new car company with close family ties to Volvo. Polestar has two models you can go out and buy today: the $150,000 hybrid Polestar 1 sports coupe and the somewhat more reasonable $60,000 Polestar 2 sedan, which has been getting pretty good reviews. Now, Polestar is an interesting company. It’s effectively a startup with tight ties to Volvo, and Thomas himself is Volvo’s chief design officer. So we talked a lot about what kind of company Polestar is — it’s pretty small and has the ability to rethink a lot of things about how a car company is organized, while having the ability to fall back on a larger company if needed. We also talked a lot about what makes a...

Ring’s end-to-end encryption for video streams is leaving technical preview, is now available to US users, and is currently rolling out globally, the Amazon-owned company announced on Tuesday. The opt-in feature makes it so that your video streams can only be viewed by you on an enrolled iOS or Android device, meaning that Ring can’t access that footage even if it wanted to. The feature works with 12 Ring cameras, and you can see the full list of compatible models and follow the steps on how to set up end-to-end encryption on Ring’s website. Ring’s battery-powered video doorbells and cameras don’t support end-to-end encryption, according to that page. Ring’s end-to-end encryption settings menu.Image: Ring End-to-end encryption is a boon for customers who want to ensure Ring can’t access th...

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has just reported one of its biggest crypto busts in the city of Vinnytsia. The large-scale cryptofarm was set up in the former warehouse of JSC Vinnytsiaoblenerho where it is estimated to have stolen up to $260,000 USD in electricity from the city. This illegal activity is said to have led to power surges and even could have left homes without electricity. The perpetrators used rigged electricity meters to conceal their activity from the authorities. In the bust, over 5,000 computers were seized including 500 graphics cards, 50 processors, phones, flash drives, and a whopping 3,800 Sony PlayStation 4 consoles. PS4s, with its AMD Radeon 7970M GPU, can be modified into a crypto miner and can be had for cheap. PS4s are technically not that efficient and ...