Technology

Amazon asked employees to remove the popular social video-sharing app TikTok from their mobile devices on Friday, as first reported by The New York Times. “Due to security risks, the TikTok app is no longer permitted on mobile devices that access Amazon email,” the company said in an email to employees Friday morning. “If you have TikTok on your device, you must remove it by 10-Jul to retain mobile access to Amazon email. At this time, using TikTok from your Amazon laptop browser is allowed.” The email was obtained and independently published by multiple reporters on Twitter. TikTok was recently caught accessing user clipboard data when running in the background, potentially exposing passwords or other sensitive data. The behavior was revealed because of a new feature in iOS 14, and it’s u...

All of those obnoxious marketing emails that crowd your inbox aren’t just pushing a product. They’re also tracking whether you’ve opened the email, when you opened it, and where you were at the time by embedding tracking software into the message. Just type “email tracking” into your search engine and watch all the software apps appear. There are a variety of methods used to track emails. For example, one of the simplest is a redirect link. Let’s say you click a link in a promotional email that leads to the page for a product you want to buy. The link has been coded to be trackable; it will go to another server with a variety of data, like what browser you are using or where you clicked the link from, before it takes you to the article. But while it’s fairly easy to spot a redirect link (f...

I. Yesterday we talked about how a recent social media conflict between journalists and the tech world might be better framed as a conflict between managers and their employees. Today I want to look at that conflict from another angle — how it played out on the buzzy, audio-only, invite-only social network Clubhouse. Like many social startups before it, the company neglected to develop or enforce strong community guidelines before launch — and the oversight could derail a company valued at $100 million while still in private beta. Let me acknowledge up front that Clubhouse is barely a few months old, and currently has just two full-time employees — its founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth. I’ve known Davison for about seven years, and have always found him fun to talk to. He’s charming, h...

The last big tech event I attended in person was Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy S20 line of smartphones. Now Samsung will join everybody else in tech by trying to capture some semblance of that experience and hype in a purely online event with the upcoming Unpacked event scheduled for August 5th. We are, of course, expecting to see the Galaxy Note 20 lineup announced that day. Though the rumors initially waffled a bit on what exactly that lineup would entail, more recent leaks point to a Note 20, a Note 20 Plus (which will be bigger), and a Note 20 Ultra (which will be… “Ultra,” whatever that means). In addition to the Note 20 line, there are plenty of other Samsung devices that are due for an imminent release. There’s the 5G version of the Galaxy Z Flip folding phone, the Galaxy Z F...

Amazon’s Fire TV platform is expanding its live TV integration to include several key new services: YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Hulu’s live TV offering. The new services join previously available services, including Pluto TV and Prime Video Channels. As part of the new integration, live content from each provider will appear in Fire TV’s live discovery features. That includes the Live tab, On Now rows, and Channel Guide. Amazon has already offered Sling TV, YouTube TV, and Hulu’s live TV service on Fire TV hardware through existing apps — what’s new here is their inclusion in the “live TV” tab. Sling TV’s integration into Fire TV’s live discovery features actually began rolling out earlier this year, YouTube TV will start tomorrow, and Hulu’s integration will occur over the next few weeks. [...

Spotify knows people are changing up their workout routines during the pandemic, so it’s making it easier for them to create playlists to soundtrack their regimens. The company is launching an interactive webpage called Soundtrack Your Workout that’ll let listeners define their workouts and preferences and then will design a playlist for them. Playlists can be as long as two hours and be a mix of both podcasts and music, or people can keep it to just one or the other. Listeners can also choose to block explicit content. They have to select from eight different workouts (including yoga, lifting, cardio, and walking) and tell Spotify who they’re working out with (whether it’s just themselves or with a friend over a video call). They’ll then have to select the “vibe” of their workout, meaning...

Recently, some of the most popular webcams have been difficult to buy at major online retailers as people bought them to help stay in contact while social distancing or working from home during the pandemic. For example, as of this writing, Logitech’s popular C920 HD Pro webcam is sold out on Logitech’s US online store, and its listed price on Amazon US is currently well above Logitech’s own $79.99 asking price. Other models are available, but the situation means you might not get the exact webcam you want. That means people have had to get creative by using standalone cameras or even old iOS or Android devices as replacement webcams. But today, I’ve been trying out a different approach: using an aftermarket lens from Moment to improve my laptop’s existing webcam, rather than replacing it ...

After months of escalating pressure, leaders from the #StopHateForProfit boycott campaign met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives today. But in a call with reporters after the meeting, organizers from Color of Change, Free Press, the NAACP, and the Anti-Defamation League described the meeting as frustrating. “The meeting that we just left was a disappointment,” said Color of Change president Rashad Robinson. “At this point, we were expecting a very clear answer to the demands we are making, and we did not get that.” Held on Zoom, the meeting was slightly over an hour, and it included a variety of policy team leads as well as chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and chief product officer Chris Cox. But while the company was eager to continue a dialogue with th...

The Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, the electrical engineering and computer science division of the esteemed German research organization, on Tuesday announced VVC, a new video codec standard that promises to bring around 50 percent efficiency gains in streaming video compression. The codec’s full name is H.266/Versatile Video Coding, as Fraunhofer says it’s designed to be a successor to the industry-standard H.264/Advanced Video Coding (AVC) and H.265/High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) formats that combined make up about 90 percent of global digital video transmission and compression on the market today. While HEVC was first released in 2013, the codec has proved controversial due to aggressive patent disputes from its various stakeholders. That’s why AVC, the predecessor to H...

Nintendo’s latest addition to the library of retro games that comes with its Switch Online subscription service includes a big hitter: Donkey Kong Country. Rare’s 1994 side-scrolling platformer was one of the more conspicuous absences from the service, and its addition presumably opens the door for its two sequels down the line. The other two games coming this month are a little more obscure. 1994’s Natsume Championship Wrestling is a US conversion of a SNES wrestling game with its Japanese licensing removed, while The Immortal is a 1990 NES conversion of a fantasy action RPG originally developed for the Apple IIGS and published by EA. All three games will be added to the service on July 15th. Nintendo Switch Online costs $19.99 a year and is required for online multiplayer in games like S...

The US Supreme Court has upheld a federal ban on robocalls to cellphones from 1991, and it struck down a provision that exempted government-debt collectors. “Americans passionately disagree about many things,” reads the majority opinion written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “But they are largely united in their disdain for robocalls.” The ruling concerns the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which prohibited “almost all robocalls to phones.” A 2015 amendment to the TCPA grants an exception to robocalls made solely to collect debt on behalf of the US government. “They are largely united in their disdain for robocalls.” The plaintiffs, a group of organizations that included the American Association of Political Consultants, argued that the ban violated the First Amendment by favor...

Audi has unveiled concept renderings of a new “Sportback” version of the Q4 E-Tron electric SUV that it debuted last year. Meant to serve as a smaller and more affordable option to the flagship E-Tron, the Q4s are expected to go on sale in 2021 and will start at around $45,000. The Q4 and the Q4 Sportback are “identical twins” from a technical perspective, according to Audi. As such, the Sportback version will also be powered by parent company Volkswagen’s modular “MEB” platform (an abbreviation of the German phrase for “modular electric drive matrix”) that is going to power a wide range of vehicles across multiple brands. This sets the Q4s apart from the original E-Tron and its variants, which are powered by an Audi-developed electric drivetrain. Spec-wise, this means the Q4 Sportback wil...