Technology

A new letter from a tech industry group is driving home the risks of Hong Kong’s proposed anti-doxxing rules. Sent to Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner for personal data by the Asia Internet Coalition (which counts Google, Apple and Facebook as members), the letter argues that the new measures will have an extreme impact on due process in Hong Kong, and could result in major US tech companies ceasing operations there. The letter was first obtained by The Wall Street Journal. “The only way to avoid these sanctions for technology companies would be to refrain from… offering their services in Hong Kong.” The letter comes in response to series of amendments to Hong Kong’s Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance (PDPO), proposed by the privacy commissioner in response to concerns around online d...

Karateka, an early martial arts side-scroller published in the US by Broderbund in 1984, was a little before my time. It was created by Jordan Mechner before he went on to make Prince of Persia — a game I do remember thanks to the horror of sending that character to a bloody, pixelated death on a bed of spikes. Karateka however was an early hit, with later iterations making it to NES and Game Boy. And the original Apple II version included a delightful little easter egg from the early days of PC gaming — putting in the floppy disk upside down would boot up the game upside down. This isn’t new exactly — people have been trying this trick for more than 35 years — but it was new to me, and I got a quick refresher today thanks to the magic of YouTube. YouTuber Geek with Social Skills was demoi...

During last weekend’s deadly heat wave, some roads in the Pacific Northwest buckled. Workers ventured out in blistering conditions to put cracked concrete and asphalt byways back together. Steel drawbridges were doused with water to make sure they wouldn’t swell shut under the oppressive heat. The heat dome that sat over the region provided a brutal stress test of its roadways, some of which couldn’t withstand multiple days of record-breaking temperatures. It’s something that’s happened before, in Washington, Wisconsin, South Dakota, and anywhere else experiencing extreme heatwaves. Here’s an example of how heat is causing some road pavement to buckle. Our crews are hard at work this morning fixing SR 544 in Whatcom County, trying to get it back open by afternoon. https://t.co/53XoBD...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is finally admitting that he underestimated how difficult it is to develop a safe and reliable self-driving car. To which the entire engineering community rose up as one to say, “No duh.” Or at least that’s how it should have happened in a just world. Instead, all the Tesla sycophants and ass-kissers on Twitter told Musk to keep up the good work, that they believed in him, and encouraged him to hurry up and roll out the latest version of his “Full Self-Driving” software that, it’s worth pointing out, does not enable a Tesla vehicle to drive itself without input from the driver. Musk has a long history of over promising and under delivering Musk has a long history of over promising and under delivering when it comes to his company’s so-called “Full Self-Driving” software...

Airbnb has blocked over 50,000 suspicious bookings across 15 US cities as part of a crackdown on parties in its properties during the pandemic. These include 7,000 in Dallas, 6,000 in San Diego, 5,100 in Charlotte, 3,500 in St. Louis, 3,000 in Columbus, and 2,700 in New Orleans, The company’s head of trust and safety communication Ben Breit tells The Verge. The Denver Post reports that it’s blocked 5,000 bookings in Phoenix, 4,500 in Las Vegas, 4,500 in Seattle, 2,600 in Denver, 2,600 in Portland, 1,800 in Salt Lake City, and 1,500 in Albuquerque. WLWT5 reports that 2,000 bookings were blocked in Cincinnati, while 3,800 were blocked in Austin, according to KXAN. The numbers show the scale of Airbnb’s enforcement action, and follows a total global ban on parties introduced last year to prev...

Croatian electric supercar startup Rimac announced that it was taking over Bugatti from Volkswagen to form a new company called Bugatti Rimac. The news was first reported by the Financial Times. Bugatti Rimac will be led by Mate Rimac, who founded the company in 2009 in a garage as a one-man operation. Over that period, Rimac has become a highly desirable brand, with many legacy automakers calling upon the startup to help build their own electric supercars. It’s not much of a question why that is. Earlier this year, Rimac released the Nevera, a quad-motor, 1,914 horsepower demonstration of electric absurdity, with a top speed of 258mph and an ability to leap to zero to 60mph in less than 2 seconds. The Nevera is expected to be the fastest sports car ever made, a title previously held by th...

Microsoft’s dysfunctional app store for Windows, the Microsoft Store, is finally improving under Windows 11. While there’s a UI overhaul and some speed improvements, the key change is allowing more apps into the store. In just the past week alone, some popular apps have started to appear in the Microsoft Store on Windows 11, making it more useful than before. OBS Studio, Zoom, Canva, WinZip, and Adobe Acrobat Reader have all made their way to the Microsoft Store in the past week, alongside Microsoft Edge browser extensions. These early additions, during a beta period for Windows 11, are a promising start. The Microsoft Store is changing on Windows 11, and eventually Windows 10, to include any traditional desktop apps. Microsoft previously restricted developers to its Universal Windows Apps...

Jeff Bezos, who has served as the CEO of Amazon since founding the company exactly 27 years ago on July 5th, 1994, has officially stepped down from the role. Andy Jassy is now listed as the company’s CEO on its investor relations website, after previously having run Amazon Web Services since 2003, while Bezos is listed as Executive Chair. The July 5th handover date was previously announced in a shareholder meeting in May. It’s an important moment for Amazon, which has had the same CEO for the entirety of its existence. Under Bezos’ leadership, the company survived the dot-com bubble bursting in the late 90s to become one of the world’s most prominent technology companies. Amazon currently dominates online commerce in the US and parts of Europe, and serves as a backbone to much of the moder...

Xiaomi’s Mi 11 Ultra is finally going on sale in India in limited quantities. The company had announced its latest flagship smartphone all the way back in March, but it’s been near-impossible to buy one outside of China ever since. The phone sold out instantly in the UK in May, suggesting very limited stock, and last month Xiaomi said the Indian launch would be delayed “due to circumstances beyond our control.” Now, Xiaomi has announced details of how people in India will actually be able to buy one, as long as they’re willing to jump through a few hoops. Customers will need to buy an “ultra gift card” for Rs. 1,999 (~$27) on the Mi.com website, which can later be redeemed against the price of the Mi 11 Ultra and includes some bonuses like two free screen replacements. The Mi 11 Ultra itse...

“This is not a car, this is different” is how Lynk & Co, a company spawned by Volvo and Geely, is positioning the launch of its 01 plug-in hybrid, a compact SUV built from the ground up to share. The more you share its digital key the less you pay each month, possibly even turning a profit. It’s a bold experiment that I was able to preview in a test vehicle in Amsterdam, where Lynk & Co is staging its first salvo against a century of car ownership mentality. Lynk & Co first announced its ambitious approach to car sharing five years ago in its home city of Gothenburg, Sweden, emboldened by studies that say cars sit unused 96 percent of the time. That’s valuable real estate that could otherwise be returned to people. So it’s with some anticipation that I set out for my week with ...

The Good Fight returned to its very weird and funny roots this week and introduced Mandy Patinkin as a — let’s say “unconventional” judge, and it’s as if my favorite character from Homeland got a new job. I know everyone is probably maxed out on how many streaming channels they can/want to subscribe to, but The Good Fight is reason enough to at least check out Paramount Plus. And I have no idea what’s going to happen on the next episode of Loki but (mild spoiler ahead!) I can’t imagine the two characters who got pruned will stay pruned. This week we finally get a first look at the prequel to The Sopranos and a new look at the new Masters of the Universe show. [embedded content] The Many Saints of Newark In this prequel to The Sopranos, Michael Gandolfini plays Tony Soprano, the iconic role...

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has ordered app stores to remove Didi Chuxing’s app, claiming the ride-hailing company had been illegally collecting users’ personal data (via Reuters). The regulator said it had ordered the company to make updates to put it in compliance with China’s data protection rules, but didn’t elaborate on what the violations may have involved. Didi was founded in China in 2012, and a recent regulatory filing shows it has 377 million active users in China alone. The company just went public on June 30th, the biggest IPO of a Chinese company on a US stock exchanges since Alibaba in 2014. On Friday, the CAC announced new user registrations for Didi’s service were being suspended pending a “cybersecurity review.” In response to a request for comment, a Didi...