Technology

Over 60 women and nonbinary people have accused influential comics author Warren Ellis of manipulative and predatory behavior toward female fans and creatives. An open letter and dozens of statements were collected on a site created by some of his alleged targets, and have also been shared with The Guardian, which published a story on the allegations today. The site was launched after several weeks of less specific allegations, including some posted on Twitter. The testimonials describe a long pattern of drawing young female fans into online or offline sexual encounters, which often devolved into controlling behavior or insults. According to The Guardian, Ellis secretly maintained up to 19 relationships at a time, while running online forums where many women believed their participation wa...

Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are calling for the federal agency to address what they say are “ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination” against its Black employees, NPR reported. More than 1,000 CDC employees signed a letter to director Robert Redfield describing a “pervasive and toxic culture of racial aggressions.” “In light of the recent calls for justice across this country and around the world, we, as dedicated public health professionals, can no longer stay silent to the widespread acts of racism and discrimination within CDC that are, in fact, undermining the agency’s core mission,” the letter reads, according to NPR, which obtained a copy. The letter notes that Black employees are only 10 percent of CDC’s leadership. In addition to dive...

The iPhone “batterygate” saga was one of the bigger controversies that Apple has ever faced. Apple’s throttling of iPhones with aging batteries prompted a class action lawsuit, and now you can register to get your chunk of the settlement that was reached earlier this year. Per MacRumors, there’s now a website where US consumers who owned an affected iPhone can go to file a claim. To meet the criteria, you must currently or have previously owned: An iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, and / or an iPhone SE that ran iOS 10.2.1 or later before December 21st, 2017 An iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before December 21st, 2017 As part of the settlement terms, Apple agreed to pay out a maximum of $500 million. The company will “provide a cash payment of approx...

Seventeen states and Washington, DC have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s policy that would prevent international students who are taking online courses from remaining in the US. ICE’s guidelines, announced on July 6th, stated that in order to remain in the country for the fall 2020 semester, international students must be enrolled in in-person classes at their schools or be subject to “immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal procedures.” Meanwhile, students who remain in their own countries would only be permitted to take remote classes and maintain their “Active status” if their school will only be offering remote classes. Under the previous policy, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) allowed international students t...

Ubisoft will let you redeem a free copy of open-world hacking simulator Watch Dogs 2 for PC right now just by logging in to your Uplay account. To snag your copy of the 2016 game, head to this page on Ubisoft’s website where you’ll be asked to log in. When you do, you’ll see a message that you’ve successfully claimed the game and that it will soon show up in your Uplay library. It’s unclear how long the giveaway will be going on, though, so you might want to jump on the deal sooner rather than later. Ubisoft had previously said the game would be offered for free if you watched its Ubisoft Forward digital press conference on Sunday and were logged in to Uplay. But technical problems prevented some people from claiming the giveaway. Ubisoft isn’t the only video game company to experience tec...

Skydio, a startup that makes autonomous drones that fly themselves with little human intervention, is entering the commercial drone market with its new X2 model. The X2 is Skydio’s first non-consumer device and it’s marketed toward government agencies, the military, and other organizations that require aerial surveillance or surveying, and it comes with a built-in infrared thermal camera. The X2 announcement coincides with Skydio’s new round of $100 million in funding, led by German multinational company Siemens’ Next47 firm. Skydio first entered the market a little more than two years ago with the Skydio R1. The R1 was an autonomous drone that sported impressive artificial intelligence-powered obstacle avoidance and other sensors and software features that let it seamlessly fly itself thr...

Workers for grocery delivery platform Shipt are planning to walk off the job and not accept new orders on Wednesday, July 15th, saying the company’s move toward an algorithm-based pay structure will reduce their pay by at least 30 percent. “This seismic company shift is occurring at the same time that its shoppers — essential workers taking unprecedented risks during this pandemic — are already suffering significantly,” a group of Shipt shoppers wrote in a Medium post, “and at the same time Shipt — a corporation profiteering off consumer fears during this pandemic — is experiencing obscene increases in its sales.” Shipt launched a new pay model, internally called “V2” in a few of its markets near the end of 2019, replacing its previous flat-fee model. It will roll out to a dozen new market...

Sony’s new Xperia 1 II smartphone is purpose-built for one very specific thing: to make your phone work a little bit more like a standalone Sony Alpha camera. It’s a long time coming: Sony has made dozens of Xperia phones since its first one in 2008, but until now, none of them have had an identity this clear or compelling. Every smartphone brand tries to create its own ecosystem — or at least its own experience. You surely understand what it’s like to live in Apple’s iPhone world, Google’s Pixel world, or Samsung’s Galaxy world. But there’s long been an entire Sony world that’s just as well-defined, and it has a community of users that’s just as dedicated. It’s just that Sony’s world wasn’t about smartphones; it was about its Alpha line of cameras. Sony has finally taken the first steps o...

Where is Google’s Pixel 4A? Sitting right on the company’s online store, as it turns out. Google seems to have mistakenly published an image of the Pixel 4A on its Canadian store. The text says “Nest Wifi,” but uh… that’s no Nest Wifi. The phone has already leaked extensively over the last few months, but this is a marketing render direct from Google — and it suggests that the 4A might finally be coming sometime in the near future. Note also that the screen has a date of May 12th on it, which is pretty solid confirmation that Google did originally plan to launch the 4A during its annual developers conference before it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nest Wifi, you say? I don’t think so. The 4A seen in the photo has a matte black finish with a light blue power button and th...

Over a matter of days, TikTok has become the scariest social network in the world. On July 7th, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the White House was considering banning the app, a move so unprecedented that it’s hard to know what government action was even being threatened. India has already taken a similar measure, and on Friday, an email went out telling Amazon employees that they should uninstall the app from their company phones — although higher-ups later said it had been sent in error. Over the weekend, Wells Fargo issued a similar order and stuck with it, and both major political parties have told their operatives to steer clear of the app. It’s the kind of avalanche of concerns you would expect from a privacy failure on the scale of Cambridge Analytica or the Ya...

California has reportedly opened its own antitrust investigation into Google, Politico reports, which would mean the search giant is now facing antitrust probes from every state in the US bar one. It is not known which aspect of the company California’s attorney general is investigating, but recent scrutiny has focused on its acquisitions, and its dominance and conduct in the ad tech market and search markets. The probe would be just the latest antitrust investigation faced by Google. Last September, attorneys general from 50 states and territories announced an antitrust investigation into Google’s advertising and search businesses. At the time, California and Alabama were the only two states to not participate in the probe. California’s non-participation was particularly notable, since th...

The upcoming OnePlus Nord will have a selfie camera with an ultra-wide 105-degree field of view. OnePlus confirmed the news in a video posted to the Nord’s Instagram page. Although it didn’t confirm the resolution of the camera, a previous report from Android Central said that the phone will have two selfie cameras: one 8-megapixel wide-angle camera and a main 32-megapixel selfie camera. OnePlus has previously shown a prototype device with dual selfie cameras during a documentary about the Nord. In the feature’s announcement video, OnePlus positioned the ultra-wide selfie camera as an alternative to using a selfie stick, meaning it should be helpful for taking selfies of groups, or just of yourself alongside more of your environment. Ultra-wide selfie cameras aren’t an entirely new feature...