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Alabama is running out of ICU beds to treat coronavirus patients, according to the mayor of Montgomery, the second largest city in the state. The dire news comes as Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, continues to lift restrictions put in place last month to slow the spread of covid-19. “Right now, if you are from Montgomery…
In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Google’s adding a long-overdue feature to its Maps app that puts details about a location’s accessibility facilities front and center. With the “Accessible Places” feature enabled, business and points of interest with wheelchair-accessible entrances are marked with a wheelchair icon along with information about whether accessible seating, restrooms,…
Facebook is the latest tech giant to broaden its telecommuting policies in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In a livestreamed employee townhall Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to “aggressively” ramp up hiring for remote workers and begin taking applications for permanent remote work among its existing 48,000 employees. According to Zuck,…
Earlier today, Cult of Mac posted the most egregious rumor: Apple is apparently crafting a pair of special edition augmented reality glasses that will look like Steve Jobs’s moderately iconic ones. Apple will then reportedly sell these glasses for money. The claim comes from Jon Prosser, a YouTuber who has made waves in the last…
Fitbit owners wear their watches and fitness trackers day and night, which gives the company tons of data about their health. Fitbit is now launching a study to determine whether all of that data can be used to diagnose covid-19 before any noticeable symptoms—including fever and cough—even begin. The Fitbit Covid-19 Study, launched today, will…
A brewing fight in the U.S. House of Representatives over the future of internet privacy came to head on Thursday during a Democratic caucus call in which party leadership allegedly misportrayed the position of one of their most senior members. Two sources with direct knowledge of the call, who were granted anonymity to speak frankly…
Netflix is planning to purge its service of subscribers whose accounts are no longer actively being used—but you may have a chance to save your precious streaming data if you resubscribe before it’s wiped. In a very uncommon move by a subscription-based service, Netflix announced Thursday that it will begin canceling the accounts of users…
Vivo teased some pretty ambitious tech with its Apex 2020 concept phone, but now it’s putting one of those far-out innovations into something you might actually be able to buy. The new Vivo X50 Pro looks a lot like other high-end phones from the back, with a large rear camera module. But things get interesting…
Community platform Nextdoor is courting police across the country, creating concerns among civil rights and privacy advocates who worry about possible conflicts of interest, over-reporting of crime, and the platform’s record of racial profiling, per a Thursday report by CityLab. That effort included an all-expenses-paid meeting in San Francisco with members of Nextdoor’s Public Agencies…
Yesterday afternoon, Apple and Google’s highly anticipated contact-tracing tech was officially rolled out, with Apple already baking it into the backend of its latest update. The question now is whether it’ll be the godsend for public health that both of the tech giants initially pitched, or if doubts surrounding the tech’s overall efficacy and trustworthiness…
A joint poll between University of Maryland researchers and the Washington Post released this week found most consumers, for a variety of reasons, are either unable or unwilling to download the proposed contact-tracing tech Apple and Google are developing to track the spread of the coronavirus. While some consumers in the study resisted adopting the…
Yesterday, Twitter announced that it was testing a new feature that allows users to limit who can and can’t reply to their tweets. While this will make it more difficult for people to harass others on the platform, this feature could prevent constituents from replying to publicly elected officials. A Twitter representative confirmed to Gizmodo…
In the wake of school closures necessitated by the current covid-19 crisis, the College Board—the organization that oversees Advanced Placement Exams—is being sued by a group of students who claim that it knew of and even acknowledged issues with at-home testing that could disproportionately affect some students and not others. As a result, the students…
Have you been laid off or furloughed? Are you a frontline worker dealing with new stresses or irresponsible management? Is working (or not working) from home starting to take a psychological toll? Submit a story using this Google form or send me an email with the subject line “My Covid Story” and provide as much detail…
Scams and creepers abound on Facebook Messenger. To combat them, Facebook is now turning to artificial intelligence. A new AI-powered safety feature for Messenger will now help people, particularly kids, identify bad actors and notify them about suspect accounts—all without reading the actual messages themselves. The feature, which was rolled out on Android in March…
If you’re going to put a smart speaker in your home that disregards your privacy and functions only to rake in profits from you in any way possible, it might as well be a disembodied interactive version of Futurama’sBender instead of Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant. “Bite my shiny metal ask me anything.” Redditor Zen_Kong…
Four months after AMD announced SmartShift, we’re finally getting a taste of the new technology that will feature in a whole lot of gaming laptops going forward—as well as Sony’s PS5 later this year. Today, Dell launched the G5 15 SE, a new laptop equipped with the brand new Ryzen 4000 series CPU and the…
Even if you and your family haven’t been financially affected by the global pandemic we’re living through, no one can deny that these are very uncertain economic times. That means you might want to consider cutting down on your monthly expenditures—and that includes all those music, movie, cloud storage, and software subscriptions that you’ve racked…
Charlie Kirk, the leader of a right-wing advocacy organization called Turning Point USA and a frequent guest on Fox News, sent out a tweet yesterday with a shocking claim. Kirk posted a photo showing someone in New Mexico who had been sent “multiple ballots multiple times,” and suggested it was evidence of voter fraud. The…
Congress is poised to pass legislation that would place several powerful surveillance tools back into the hands of federal law enforcement agencies that have a history of abusing their authority. But bipartisan support is now mounting to increase privacy protections around Americans who’ve been spied on by their government for decades. Remotely from homes and…
