Monthly Archives: January 2022

Washington DC's AG sues Google for 'deceiving users and invading their privacy'

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Google, no stranger to lawsuits about its practices these days, is facing a fresh legal broadside from Washington DC Attorney General Karl Racine. Racine (pictured) has launched an action claiming that Google has violated the Consumer Protection Procedures act in the state, specifically about location tracking. Essentially, Racine believes that while Google says its users can opt-out of having their whereabouts identified, such tracking remains in place. Racine’s claim is being mirrored by similar AG-led lawsuits in Texas, Washington State and Indiana.

Much of this controversy was first publicized back in 2018 when an Associated Press report identified that location tracking remained active regardless of the user’s choice. The claim says that between 2014 and 2019, despite these promises, tracking data was stored in a Web and App Activity database. As our deep dive on the subject explained, Google did enable users to go in and erase their location from this file, but the process was slow and laborious.

“Google leads consumers to believe that consumers are in control of whether Google collects and retains information about their location and how that information is used,” says the complaint. “In reality, consumers who use Google products cannot prevent Google from collecting, storing and profiting from their location.” It added that the use of dark patterns to nudge a user to consenting to data collection is harmful to consumers.

This case follows a landmark action in Arizona, brought in 2020, where AG Mark Brnovich wanted the company to pay back ad money to users who though they had turned tracking off, but did not. In 2021, documents from that case emerged claiming that Google had further sought to obscure the settings that would enable a user to disable location tracking. 

Engadget has contacted Google for a response and will update this story when one arrives. 



Source: Engadget – Washington DC’s AG sues Google for ‘deceiving users and invading their privacy’

Paramount Sets Its Sights on New Dates for Animated Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movies

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Could Sony really move ahead with its Madame Web plans this year? Eternals’ Lauren Ridloff returns to The Walking Dead in new pictures from the final season. Plus, a new look at what’s coming on Legends of Tomorrow and Nancy Drew. Spoilers get!

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Source: Gizmodo – Paramount Sets Its Sights on New Dates for Animated Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movies

How to Make Store-Bought Mayonnaise Taste Homemade

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If you make your own mayo, you know you can go all out by playing around with vinegars and various fats. Duck fat mayo, for instance, will change your sandwich game. Even something as simple as swapping egg yolks for whole eggs can change the flavor and texture of your spread. But while I love tweaking and tinkering…

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Source: LifeHacker – How to Make Store-Bought Mayonnaise Taste Homemade

Linux Jargon Buster: What are Upstream and Downstream?

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The terms: upstream and downstream are rather ambiguous terms and, I think, not really used by the general public. If you are a Linux user and do not write or maintain software, chances are pretty good that these terms will mean nothing to you, but they can be instructive in how communication between groups within the Linux world works.

Source: LXer – Linux Jargon Buster: What are Upstream and Downstream?

Google's Nest Hub Max is down to $169 for today only

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Those looking to add to their Google home setup can get the biggest Nest smart display for less today. Adorama has a one-day-only sale that knocks $60 off the Nest Hub Max, bringing it down to $169. That’s even cheaper than we saw it a couple of weeks ago when a bunch of Nest gadgets were discounted across the web, and it’s $11 less than the device’s Black Friday price last year.

Buy Nest Hub Max at Adorama – $169

The Nest Hub Max earned a score of 86 from us when it first came out in 2019 and it remains a good option for those that rely on the Google Assistant and want a larger home hub with advanced smart features. It has a spacious 10-inch HD touchscreen on which you can do things like take a Zoom call, watch YouTube or Netflix and control all of the smart lights, thermostats and other gadgets in your home. Its stereo speakers help it sound better than the smaller Nest Hubs, so it’ll be good for both video watching and music playing.

The built-in camera lets you do more than just take video calls. It enables Face Match, which is similar to Google’s Voice Match feature in that it recognizes who’s using the device so it can display information relevant to you including calendar alerts, messages and more. If you have more than one person in the house using the Hub Max, this feature will come in handy. The Hub Max also supports gesture controls, which allow you to do things like raise a palm to the camera to pause a video or song that’s playing.

While it takes up more space on a countertop than a Nest Cam, the Nest Hub Max can act as one in your home, too. You can use the Nest Cam app to pull up the feed from the device’s built-in camera, letting you keep watch over your home when you’re away. So while most smart displays are multi-use devices, you’re truly getting a lot of bang for your buck with the Nest Hub Max — especially when it’s on sale like this.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.



Source: Engadget – Google’s Nest Hub Max is down to 9 for today only

After 7 years, a spent Falcon 9 rocket stage is on course to hit the Moon

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Source: Ars Technica – After 7 years, a spent Falcon 9 rocket stage is on course to hit the Moon

This Analogue Pocket Rival Is the Best Cheap Handheld You Can Buy

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As excellent a retro handheld as the Analogue Pocket is, at $220 it’s an expensive piece of hardware—pricier than even the Nintendo Switch Lite. Analogue’s use of hardware emulation delivers a flawless retro gaming experience, but don’t write off software emulation just yet. For $60, the Miyoo Mini is a brilliant…

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Source: Gizmodo – This Analogue Pocket Rival Is the Best Cheap Handheld You Can Buy

Interview with Intel’s Dan Ragland, Head of Overclocking: Tuning Alder Lake For Performance

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The topic of overclocking has been an interesting one to track over the years. Over a decade ago, when dealing with 2-4 core processors, an effective overclock gave a substantial performance uplift, often allowing a $200 processor to perform like the one that cost $999. However, core counts have increased over the last couple of years, but also companies like Intel are getting better at understanding their silicon, and are able to ship it out of the box almost at the silicon limit anyway. So what use is overclocking? We turned to Dan Ragland, who runs Intel’s Overclocking Lab in Hillsboro, Oregon, to find out what overclocking now means for Intel, what it means for Alder Lake, but also how Intel is going to approach overclocking in the future.



Source: AnandTech – Interview with Intel’s Dan Ragland, Head of Overclocking: Tuning Alder Lake For Performance

The Best Laptop Accessories You Shouldn't Live Without

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It might seem counterintuitive, but the need for accessories and peripherals has only grown as laptops become more advanced. Modern notebooks need to be slim and lightweight with super thin display bezels—physical requirements that lead to some inherent limitations. Few ports, poor speakers, awful webcams, and shallow…

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Source: Gizmodo – The Best Laptop Accessories You Shouldn’t Live Without

The Next Huawei? US Threatens to Inflict 'Export Control' on Russia if It Invades Ukraine

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How exactly could Russia be deterred from invading Ukraine? The U.S. government is now “threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace,” according to Stars and Stripes (an editorially-independent newspaper for the American military). The newspaper cites administration officials as its source:

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials. Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei. The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning 30% last year, according to analysts.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule. “This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government,” technology analyst Dan Wang of Gavekal Dragonomics, a research firm in Shanghai, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm’s supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

Now officials in Washington say they are working with European and Asian allies to craft a version of the rule that would aim to stop flows of crucial components to industries for which Russian President Vladimir Putin has high ambitions, such as civil aviation, maritime and high technology…. But the effort could face head winds from American and European business interests that fear using export controls could lead to Russian retaliation in other spheres — and eventually cause foreign companies to seek to design U.S. technology out of their products. That’s because the extension of the rule beyond a single company like Huawei to an entire country or entire sectors of a country is unprecedented.

“It’s like a magic power — you can only use it so many times before it starts to degrade,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank. “Other countries will say, ‘Oh, man, the U.S. has total control over us. We’d better find alternatives.'”
The newspaper also spoke to Paul Triolo, chief of technology policy at a global political risk research and consulting firm called Eurasia Group. His opinion “this would be weaponizing the U.S. semiconductor supply chain against an entire country.”

And in more ways than one:
Targeted use of the foreign direct product rule could be a blow to Russia’s military, which relies on a type of chip called Elbrus that is designed in Russia but manufactured in Taiwan at a chip foundry called TSMC, according to Kostas Tigkos, an electronics expert at Janes Group, a U.K.-based provider of defense intelligence. If the United States barred TSMC from supplying those chips to Russia, as it successfully barred TSMC from supplying Huawei, that would have a “devastating effect,” Tigkos said.

In a statement, TSMC said it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that it has a “rigorous export control system in place … to ensure export control restrictions are followed.”Analysts say that Western multinational firms probably would comply with the export controls. All U.S. chipmakers include clauses in their contracts requiring customers to abide by U.S. export rules.

The article also explores a scenario where businesses in China step in to supply Russia (citing estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics that China already builds 70% of the computers and smartphones that Russia imports).

“If Chinese firms wound up supplying Russia in violation of the rule, that would leave Washington with a major diplomatic dilemma: whether to sanction them, even if they make ordinary — not military — goods.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – The Next Huawei? US Threatens to Inflict ‘Export Control’ on Russia if It Invades Ukraine

The Morning After: The Steam Deck will support Epic's anti-cheat software

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Cheating is rife across many gaming platforms, but the biggest cheaters are usually found around PC gaming — despite games companies banning thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of the scamps. Valve’s Steam Deck, its upcoming handheld, should make it harder to bend the rules.

TMA
Steam

The company announced titles that depend on Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) software can now run on the portable. Valve said adding Steam Deck support to titles that use EAC is “a simple process.” Developers won’t need to update their SDK version or make other time-consuming changes. It joins BattlEye support, meaning, as Valve notes: “The two largest anti-cheat services are now easily supported on Proton and Steam Deck.”

However, it’s still unclear whether some of the most popular multiplayer games on Steam that use BattlEye and EAC, including titles like Rainbow Six Siege and PUBG, will work on day one.

— Mat Smith

Another TV show is making PR problems for Peloton

Must be a hard workout.

TMA
Billions

Peloton didn’t need more bad news. The premiere episode of Billions season six includes a scene that, like the Sex and the City follow-up And Just Like That, points a finger at Peloton’s Bike for causing a heart attack for Mike “Wags” Wagner (played by David Costabile). Unlike And Just Like That, however, Wagner survives — he even references the AJLT scene, telling staff that he’s “not going out” like that character.

Continue reading.

Latest Galaxy S22 leak includes possible pricing for Europe

And less memory for the highest-specced model

TMA
Evan Blass

According to WinFuture’s Roland Quandt, European pricing for the Galaxy S22 series will start at €849 (roughly $1,018), with the base models of the Galaxy S22 Plus and Ultra slated to cost €1,049 ($1,188) and €1,249 ($1,414). If accurate, this should mean the 2022 Samsung’s Galaxy S lineup will cost just as much as it did in 2021. In Europe at least, the Galaxy S22 Ultra will ship with 8GB of RAM, while the S21 Ultra packs 12GB of RAM.

And if you thought that was pricey, a separate leak from Android Police earlier this month suggested the company could charge an extra $100 stateside for every model in the Galaxy S22 lineup. We should know more very soon.

Continue reading.

Apple pulls verification requirement for US education shoppers

The move may be temporary.

Earlier this week, Apple began requiring students and teachers in the US to verify their identity through authentication service UNiDAYS before they could take advantage of the company’s discounted education pricing. However, that’s since disappeared. You can once again buy discounted Macs, iPads and other Apple products from the company’s US education website without needing to verify you’re currently a student or a teacher.

Continue reading.

Google claims court ruling would force it to ‘censor’ the internet

The company appealed to Australia’s High Court to overturn a defamation case.

Google has asked the High Court of Australia to overturn a 2020 ruling it warns could have a “devastating” effect on the wider internet. Google claims it will be forced to “act as censor” if the country’s highest court doesn’t overturn a decision that awarded a lawyer $40,000 in defamation damages for an article the company had linked to through its search engine.

In 2016, George Defteros, a Victoria state lawyer, contacted Google to ask the company to remove a 2004 article from The Age. The piece featured reporting on murder charges prosecutors filed against Defteros related to the death of three men. Those charges were later dropped in 2005. The company refused to remove the article from its search results as it viewed the publication as a reputable source.

Continue reading.

 

The biggest news stories you might have missed


Sony will release a movie made using the PlayStation game-builder ‘Dreams’

‘We Met in Virtual Reality’ finds love in the metaverse

PlatinumGames’ long-awaited shoot ’em-up arrives February 22nd

What we bought: A rice cooker whose greatest trick isn’t actually rice

The latest ‘Star Trek: Picard’ season two trailer teases a time-traveling adventure



Source: Engadget – The Morning After: The Steam Deck will support Epic’s anti-cheat software

Apple's second-gen AirPods fall back to $100

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A number of Apple’s sound products are on sale right now at Amazon including the AirPods Max and AirPods Pro, but the best deal is to be found on the second generation AirPods. They’re now on sale for just $100 or 37 percent off, the second-best deal we’ve seen on them since Black Friday. 

Buy second-gen Apple AirPods at Amazon – $100

The second-gen AirPods lack the active noise cancellation of higher-end models but still deliver solid sound quality and good battery life — up to five hours and a few charges with the included case. The biggest benefit is available to Apple users, as the H1 chipset allows you to connect in seconds and switch quickly between an iPhone, iPad and MacBook. The biggest difference with the latest third-gen AirPods is improved comfort for more users in the latter model. 

Apple AirPods Pro on sale at Amazon
Engadget

The AirPods Pro, meanwhile, are on sale for $180, or 28 percent off the regular price. They’re Apple’s best-sounding earbuds, offering great clarity, refined bass tones and Apple’s spatial Dolby Atmos audio. The active noise cancellation (ANC) is highly effective, blocking enough noise that you don’t have to crank up the sound excessively. Battery life is also solid, with up to 4.5 hours on a charge with ANC turned on. Other features include a transparency mode so you can talk to others, touch controls, and the ability to switch quickly between Apple devices. 

Buy Apple AirPods Pro at Amazon – $180

AirPods Max on sale Amazon
Engadget

Finally, Apple’s AirPods Max headphones are on sale for $449 ($100 off the regular price) in the Sky Blue color only (shown above). If you’re good with that, they offer excellent balanced sound, very effective active noise cancellation and on-board controls. You’ll also get benefits in the Apple ecosystem like simple pairing and spatial audio. They also deliver solid battery life. We’ve seen a lower price at Woot, but returns and purchases are more straightforward with Amazon, and it’s still a significant discount.

Buy Apple AirPods Max at Amazon – $449

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.



Source: Engadget – Apple’s second-gen AirPods fall back to 0

China Lifts Strict Covid-19 Lockdown in Xian After Daily Cases Hit Zero

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The city of Xian, China lifted its covid-19 lockdown on Monday after a month of imposing some of the toughest public health measures in the world, according to Chinese state media the Global Times. But the lockdown worked. Xian, which has a population of 13 million people, hasn’t had a new case of covid-19 since three…

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Source: Gizmodo – China Lifts Strict Covid-19 Lockdown in Xian After Daily Cases Hit Zero

New ASUS Sensor Driver For Linux Aims For Greater Flexibility & Faster Sensor Reading

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It’s just with the in-development Linux 5.17 kernel that the “asus_wmi_ec_sensors” is making its debut for greatly expanded sensor support for modern ASUS desktop motherboards. However, there is already a new driver that has been in development that ultimately aims to be superior to this still-new driver…

Source: Phoronix – New ASUS Sensor Driver For Linux Aims For Greater Flexibility & Faster Sensor Reading

Sony's WH-XB910N ANC headphones are 49 percent off in Amazon's one-day sale

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For anyone looking for ANC wireless over-ear headphones at a decent price, Sony’s WH-XB910N should be front of mind. If you’ve been checking them out, now is the time to buy as they’re on sale at Amazon for just $128, a full 49 percent off the regular $250 price. 

Buy Sony WH-XB910N headphones at Amazon – $128

The WH-XB910N headphones aren’t quite up to the standard of Sony’s $350 flagship WH-1000XM4 headphones, but they still deliver excellent sound quality while looking great. You get clear mids and highs, powerful bass and Sony’s 360 Reality Audio surround sound, available on select songs with Deezer, Tidal, Amazon Music HD and other streaming services. The active noise cancellation (ANC) works well though, again, it’s not quite up to the standard of the WH-1000XM4 model (which is nearly triple the price).  

The WH-XB910N headphones are great for working at home, thanks to the “Precise Voice Pickup” that amplifies your voice on calls. It also offers on-board controls and an ambient sound mode so you can be better aware of your environment. It’ll last over a day thanks to the 30-hour battery life, and you can get an additional 4.5 hours with a 10-minute quick charge.

The $128 price is one of the best we’ve seen, topping the $138 deal available over the holidays last year. There aren’t many other models that can rival it at that price, so act soon before they’re gone. 



Source: Engadget – Sony’s WH-XB910N ANC headphones are 49 percent off in Amazon’s one-day sale