Category: I-phone

In order to settle a lawsuit brought by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Activision Blizzard has agreed to establish an $18 million fund for eligible claimants — meaning, employees who were harmed by the company's discriminatory hiring and management practices. The EEOC lawsuit was filed Monday, and that same afternoon, Activision Blizzard announced the $18 million conclusion.

Activision Blizzard is the company behind blockbuster video game franchises including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. Activision Blizzard's revenue for the year 2020 was $8.1 billion, with a profit of more than $2 billion.

Today's $18 million agreement follows a three-year investigation into Activision Blizzard by the EEOC. The agreement is subject to court approval, and any leftover funds will be distributed among equality groups in the video game industry. The company is also upgrading its workplace policies and appointing a third-party equal opportunity consultant that will report to the Board of Directors and the EEOC.

This is just one of several lawsuits assailing Activision Blizzard at the moment. The first was filed by California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing on July 20th, following a years-long investigation that concluded Activision Blizzard executives fostered a sexist, frat-boy style culture, and the company routinely violated equal-pay and labor laws. Since then, the SEC has opened its own investigation into the company, investors have filed a separate lawsuit, and the National Labor Relations Board is looking into complaints of coercion and interrogation at Activision Blizzard in response to the recent legal pressure. Several high-profile executives have left the company.

With the addition of features like a 120Hz display on some models, Apple’s iPhone 13 lineup is many ways a step above the phones the company shipped last year. But when it comes to the question of repairability, the story is more complicated. Conducting a teardown of the device, iFixit found it couldn’t get the iPhone 13’s Face ID feature to work if replaced the phone’s display. No matter what workaround it tried, iFixit could not get Face ID to work again. By its estimation, the display on the iPhone 13 lineup is serial-locked to the device. “Right now, if you replace your screen, Apple kills your Face ID, unless they control the repair,” the company warns.

While obviously not a good look for Apple, there may be a simple explanation for what’s happening. iFixit says it spoke to a licensed repair technician who said they were told by Apple support that the issue is a bug the company plans to fix in a future iOS release. We’ve reached out to Apple for more information. If it turns that limitation is not a mistake, it would be a brazen move on Apple’s part given that the FTC, at the behest of President Joe Biden, recently voted unanimously to tackle unlawful repair restrictions.

Facebook will publish two internal slide decks detailing its research into how Instagram affects teens’ mental health sometime “in the next few days.” Speaking at an online event hosted by The Atlantic, the company’s policy chief Nick Clegg said the company would release the data to Congress before making it available to the public.

“We're just making sure that all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted so that we can release it both to Congress and then to the public in the next few days," Clegg said of the slides, some of which have already been made public. His comments come more than 10 days after The Wall Street Journalpublished an investigation into how Instagram affects the teens who use it. Citing internal research conducted by Facebook, The Journal wrote that “Instagram is harmful for a sizable percentage” of teens, particularly teenage girls.

The investigation prompted immediate pushback from lawmakers, many of whom were already wary of Facebook’s handling of child safety, and its plans to build a version of its service for children under 13. On Monday, Instagram said it would “pause” that work in order to create more “parental supervision tools.” Members of Congress responded saying they want the company to end the project entirely. Facebook’s head of safety is scheduled to testify at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the subject Thursday.

Now, Facebook seems to be hoping that releasing more of its underlying research could help address concerns from lawmakers and others. In a separate statement published Sunday, the company’s top researcher suggested that The Wall Street Journal had mischaracterized its research. Clegg went a step further Monday, saying that the reporting based on documents “leaked by someone who clearly feels they have some points to make.”

“If you read the decks, and then compare it with some of the assertions that, you know, Instagram is toxic for all teens and so on, I don't think any reasonable person … would say that the research sustains that claim,” Clegg said. “When the dust settles people will see that we're just sincerely trying to kind of — like external researchers — are trying to work out what the complex relationship is between individuals, given their own individual circumstances, and their lives and their use of social media.”

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the company would release “two decks” that were central to The Journal report, but didn’t elaborate on the timing of the release.

But the decks alone are unlikely to quiet Facebook’s critics. For one, Facebook’s own rebuttal of The Wall Street Journal reporting appears to undermine the significance of its own research. “This research, some of which relied on input from only 40 teens, was designed to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram,” Facebook VP Pratiti Raychoudhury wrote. “It did not measure causal relationships between Instagram and real-world issues.”

It also raises questions about how Facebook will present the data it does make public. Last month, the company released a report on “widely viewed content” on its platform. The report was meant to rebuff criticism that News Feed favors polarizing content. But researchers outside the company quickly poked holes in the report, and said it was emblematic of Facebook’s larger transparency issues, particularly when it comes to working with outside researchers.

Which is why it’s notable that Clegg would invoke “external researchers” in his defense of the company. If Instagram isn’t actually harmful to most teens, as the company is claiming, then researchers not on Facebook’s payroll may be positioned to credibly make that point. Yet researchers say the company has made data increasingly difficult to access. And in some cases, the company has actively blocked outsiders from studying its platform, like when it recently disabled the personal Facebook accounts of researchers at New York University and then provided “misleading” explanations about its reasons for doing so, according to the FTC. (Incidentally, the researcher at the center of that controversy is testifying in a separate Congressional hearing this week.)

They may seem like unrelated issues. But if Facebook had better relationships with researchers outside the company, and made more of its own findings public it might be better able to head off internal critics who “have some points to make.”

One week after coming to terms with the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), Twitch has signed a deal with Warner Music Group. In partnering with the record label, a first for the Amazon-owned platform, the company says Warner Music will launch dedicated channels for some of its artists, including the likes of Bella Poarch and Saweetie. The label will also create a standalone channel that will air original programming from its IMGN production house.

But if you’re a content creator on Twitch, those are secondary to the other part of the deal. Much like its pact with the NMPA, this isn’t a licensing agreement; creators can’t include music from WMG artists in their streams. As part of the agreement, WMG has agreed to use the new process Twitch recently put in place to allow rights holders to report content. In an email last week to creators, the company said the new system is more forgiving towards individuals who may have inadvertently played music they weren’t authorized to use. 

Some 23 years after its original run, Babylon 5 is making its way back to TV. According to Variety, The CW has ordered a reboot of the seminal sci-fi series. What’s more, original creator J. Michael Straczynski is attached to the project.

That’s good news because Straczynski penned 92 of the 110 episodes that make up Babylon 5. At the moment, there are relatively few details on the production, but what we do know is that it’s being billed as a “from-the-ground-up reboot.” None of the original actors from the series, including Bruce Boxleitner, are currently attached to the project, but that may change. With its sometimes dated visuals, it can be hard to see what makes Babylon 5 so special. However, in many ways, it was ahead of its time. It told a serialized story long before shows like The Wire popularized the format.

Skype has some significant changes in the works. It offered a peek at what's coming later this year, with a focus on speed, reliability and design, as well as other improvements. For one thing, video calls (on what Skype calls the "call stage") are getting a visual overhaul. New layouts and themes are on the way. You'll be able to see yourself on the main view while you're on a call, though you can hide your feed if you'd rather not look at your own face.

Video feeds are being rearranged into a grid to avoid relegating folks to a minimized view. Instead everyone on the call, including those who aren't sharing video, will be visible. You'll see larger video feeds in the top bar too.

Skype

There are several viewing options for the call stage, including speaker view, grid view, a large gallery and Together Mode (which makes seem like everyone's in the same space). You can also opt only to include people who are sharing video in the grid or switch the video stream off completely. Audio-only participants can use one of the app's background replacement images while on a call, rather than grey nothingness.

More colorful themes are in the pipeline, with features including gradients for buttons and for users without avatars. Meanwhile, "the beauty of the left side panel screams art, balance and lightness," says Skype, giving perhaps its best Apple impression.

Skype

Skype is also redesigning Meet Now, which allows people to join calls without signing up or installing the app. Invitation links are getting a new look, as invitees will see the name and avatar of your call. The service says it will soon support all browsers as well.

In addition, Skype is working on performance. It claims it has boosted performance "in key scenarios" by almost a third on the desktop app and by over 2,000 percent on Android. Also new or on the way are custom notification sounds, and an updated reactions window that lets you respond more quickly by searching or using pinned reactions.

Elsewhere, you can use Office Lens on the Skype mobile app to share scanned documents, photos and videos. A new feature called TwinCam will let you add a video feed from a second device to your call. That could be handy if you want to show off your pet, or let students see your textbook and your face at the same time. Just scan a QR code with your iOS or Android device to get started.

Skype

Mere hours after Facebook said it was pausing work on Instagram Kids, a group of Democratic lawmakers has called on the company to instead completely abandon the project. Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal and Representatives Kathy Castor and Lori Trahan say Facebook’s decision to halt development is “insufficient.”

“Facebook has completely forfeited the benefit of the doubt when it comes to protecting young people online and it must completely abandon this project,” the group said in a joint statement on Monday. They’re the same four lawmakers who told Facebook earlier in the year they had “serious concerns” about the project when they first learned about it.

Facebook said it was suspending work on Instagram Kids after The Wall Street Journalpublished a report that claimed the company had ignored its own research on the harm apps like Instagram can do to young people. The company quickly refuted that piece, saying its studies showed young people could have both positive and negative experiences interacting with social media. The company will have to answer questions on its research later this week when the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee holds a hearing on the matter on Thursday.

Not everyone is comfortable with using a photo of themselves as a profile picture, and others might find it tough to find an image that represents them appropriately. To help you find something that works, Google has revealed its first batch of Google Illustrations.

When you set your profile picture in Gmail, Google Workspace, Contacts on Android, you can select an illustration. Options include animals, mythical creatures, locations and hobbies. Google says the initial batch of illustrations "is inclusive of various cultures, interests and backgrounds." You can customize them by changing the colors and cropping the image.

Once you've selected and tweaked an illustration to your liking and saved it, your contacts will see it across several Google products. Google says it will expand the collection and bring illustrations to additional products and platforms, including iOS and the web.

Halloween's coming, and so too is a virtual-reality remake of a Resident Evil game. The latest version of Resident Evil 4 will arrive as an Oculus Quest 2 exclusive on October 21st at 10AM ET.

Capcom announced the remake back in April. The Gamecube classic has been retooled for VR by Oculus Studios and Armature Studio. You'll control Leon from a first-person perspective rather than looking over his shoulder. Several aspects, such as combat and inventory management, were reworked to take advantage of VR.

You can use physical movements to pick up and use weapons and items. Instead of switching to a menu to swap guns, you can grab a different one from your holster. Whether you play standing or seated is up to you, as there's support for teleportation and room-scale movement, though you'll primarily use the analog stick for navigation.

Back in June, the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) hit Roblox with a $200 million lawsuit for allowing players to illegally use music on stream. Now, some three months later, the two have resolved their differences. On Monday, Roblox and the NMPA announced a settlement agreement that includes an opt-in option for NMPA members to negotiate their own licensing deals with the gaming platform. The financial terms of the settlement were not disclosed by the two organizations.

The deal follows a similar one the NMPA announced with Twitch last week. That agreement doesn’t give creators access to songs they can use on stream. Instead, it creates a new reporting mechanism for copyright infringement that starts with a warning instead of a penalty. In an email, Twitch told users the new process is more forgiving to individuals who may have inadvertently played music they weren’t authorized to use.

Apple is slowly but surely rolling out 3D city views in the Maps app. Starting today, you can now pinch and zoom your way across a three-dimensional render of London. Apple switched on the experience for New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles last week as part of the iOS 15 release.

The feature will be enabled in Washington DC, San Diego and Philadelphia by the end of the year. Apple is bringing 3D maps to Canada next year, in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

In the 3D maps, you'll see elevation details throughout each city, along with new road labels and landmarks such as LA's Dodger Stadium, the Statue of Liberty and the Royal Albert Hall in London. A nighttime mode casts a moonlit glow over the maps at dusk.

Apple says the app will soon offer improved navigation through CarPlay. Public transit riders might find it easier to get around too. If you enter your route, the app can notify you when it's time to get off the bus or subway. You can also see step-by-step walking directions in augmented reality after scanning nearby buildings to determine your position and orientation.

You don't need to use the official Stadia Controller if you want to use Google's game streaming service on your TV — or any dedicated controller, for that matter. Google is rolling out a feature that lets TV-bound Stadia players use their Android phone or iPhone as a virtual gamepad. You can also use third-party gamepads by connecting them to your phone through Bluetooth or USB.

The widened controller support requires Android TV, Google TV or a Chromecast Ultra. In most cases, you'll need to either add a controller or enable the touch gamepad through the Stadia mobile app, and promptly choose "play on TV." Android TV and Google TV owners will also need to enable a controller through the avatar section on the big-screen Stadia app.

This might help boost Stadia's adoption. While it has long given you the flexibility of where you can play, you haven't had many choices for that setup. It's now relatively easy to use a favorite gamepad with your TV or, if you prefer, save a little money and use no gamepad at all. It won't be perfect, however. A phone's touchscreen can only do so much, and using your phone as a go-between is bound to add a little latency.

Square Enix has put Life is Strange: Remastered Collection back on the release calendar. The updated versions of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm will arrive on February 1st, 2022.

The collection will include remastered visuals for characters and the environments, along with a new engine and upgraded lighting. There will be full motion-captured facial animations in Life is Strange, and you'll get access to the deluxe Before the Storm content, including the "Farewell" episode.

The publisher originally planned to release the bundle on September 30th, but delayed it in August to "alleviate any additional pressure on the Life is Strange team." Life is Strange: True Colors dropped earlier this month, and an expansion will be available this Thursday.

Life is Strange: Remastered Collection is coming to Steam, Google Stadia, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and, through backward compatibility, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Nearly five years after Twitter shut down Vine, TikTok has reached the coveted 1 billion monthly active user mark. The company announced the milestone in a blog post on Monday. Attracting 1 billion users to any platform is a significant feat. However, TikTok’s rise in popularity is especially impressive when you consider almost exactly a year ago the Trump Administration was threatening to ban the app if ByteDance, TikTok’s Bejing-based parent company, didn’t sell it to an American buyer.

Then you have the speed at which TikTok achieved the feat. The app has only been widely available since 2018 — though you could download it in select markets as early as 2017. It took Instagram nearly eight years after its initial release and almost six years after it was acquired by Facebook in 2012 before it passed the 1 billion user threshold. Granted, the internet was a smaller place then with fewer people connected to it through their phones, but none of that takes away from TikTok’s ascent.

Facebook will soon let folks who still have an Oculus Go do so much more with the virtual reality headset. The company will release an unlocked build of the operating system, which users can sideload to get full root access and do just about anything they want with the device.

Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack made the announcement in a tweet spotted by The Verge. Carmack clarified this only applies to Oculus Go, and not Oculus Quest. He noted that he'd been pushing for the move for years and that "getting all the necessary permissions for this involved so much more effort [than] you would expect."

Although Facebook discontinued Oculus Go last year to focus on Quest headsets, it's nice to hear it hasn't forgotten about the older model entirely. The unlocked OS could ensure that Go headsets won't be totally obsolete.

Carmack pointed out that the build will let anyone who finds an unopened Go in the future update the headset to the final version of the OS — even after the servers are closed. He also expressed hope that this will set a "precedent for when headsets go unsupported in the future."

When the build is ready, Carmack said it will likely be available through the Oculus website. However, he suggested Facebook has yet to finalize the distribution plan.