Snapstreaks, YouTube autoplay, and endless scrolling are all coming under fire from a new bill, which is sponsored by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), targeting the tech industry’s “addictive” design.
Hawley’s Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology Act, or the SMART Act, would ban these features that work to keep users on platforms longer, along with others, like Snapstreaks, that incentivize the continued use of these products. If approved, the Federal Trade Commission and Health and Human Services could create similar rules that would expire after three years unless Congress codified them into law.
“Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction,” Hawley said. “Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away.”
Deceptive design played an enormous part in last week’s FTC settlement with Facebook, and Hawley’s bill would make it unlawful for tech companies to use dark patterns to manipulate users into opting into services. For example, “accept” and “decline” checkboxes would need to be the same font, format, and size to help users make better, more informed choices.
DoorDash’s years-long scheme to use customer tips to subsidize its workers’ wages is finally catching up to the company. And hot on the heels of renewed outrage about its tip-shaving scheme, a new class-action lawsuit is taking aim at the company for misleading its customers about how their tips were used.
Though the controversial tipping system has been covered widely for months, the lawsuit follows a recent New York Times article in which reporter Andy Newman completed a 27-hour stint as a dasher (the term DoorDash uses for its delivery workers). The suit, filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of Brooklyn resident Alan Arkin and “others similarly situated,” claims that that DoorDash failed to make clear to its customers that tips they gave through its app to couriers were not being allocated as they were intended to be, and that had customers known this, they would not have tipped through the app. (It wasn’t immediately clear by press time whether the plaintiff Alan Arkin is the same award-winning, Little Miss Sunshine-starring actor of the same name, but rest assured we’ve reached out to Arkin’s lawyers to find out.)
After July 31, 2021, Skype for Business will no longer be accessible. Between now and then, however, Skype for Business Online users will continue to use the service as usual and can continue to add new users, Microsoft's blog post says. Starting Sept. 1, 2019, however, all new Office 365 customers will be onboarded to Teams and won't have the option of selecting Skype for Business Online instead.
I asked Microsoft officials if customers would have an option to pay for a custom support agreement if they aren't ready to move from Skype for Business Online to Teams by July 2021 and was told by a spokesperson the company declined to comment.
New York (CNN Business)In one of the biggest data breaches ever, a hacker gained access to more than 100 million Capital One customers' accounts and credit card applications earlier this year.
Paige Thompson is accused of breaking into a Capital One server and gaining access to 140,000 Social Security numbers, 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers, in addition to an undisclosed number of people's names, addresses, credit scores, credit limits, balances, and other information, according to the bank and the US Department of Justice.
A criminal complaint says Thompson tried to share the information with others online. The 33-year-old, who lives in Seattle, had previously worked as a tech company software engineer for Amazon (AMZN) Web Services, the cloud hosting company that Capital One was using, the Justice Department said. She was able to gain access by exploiting a misconfigured web application firewall, according to a court filing.
Thompson was arrested Monday in connection with the breach, the Justice Department...
Fifty years ago on Wednesday, the first humans to walk on the moon splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
NASA is itching to launch astronauts back to the moon, with an immediate goal of putting boots on the lunar surface in 2024 with its Artemis program. But to accomplish that, the agency may wind up turning to private rocket developers like SpaceX.
Artemis isn't meant to repeat the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, NASA wants to send cargo and supplies to the lunar surface, build up a permanent base there, and start looking for ice. Hundreds of millions of tons of water exist on the moon, and that resource can be mined, melted, turned into air, and split into rocket fuel to power voyages to Mars.
NASA plans to use government-funded Space Launch System rockets to return to the moon. But those vehicles won't start launching until late 2021 (the first one was supposed to fly in 2017) and the program is...
The government is now "working on the assumption" of a no-deal Brexit, Michael Gove has said.
Mr Gove said his team still aimed to come to an agreement with Brussels but, writing in the Sunday Times, he added: "No deal is now a very real prospect."
Treasury sources say they expect more than £1bn of extra funding to be made available later this week for no-deal planning and preparation.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Chancellor Sajid Javid said there would be "significant extra funding" for 500 new Border Force officers and "possible" improved infrastructure at British ports.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told Mr Gove to chair no-deal meetings seven days a week until Brexit is delivered, according to the Sunday Times.
Mr Gove said tweaks to Theresa May's withdrawal agreement - which was approved by the EU but resoundingly rejected by Parliament - would not be enough.
A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year.
Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi's ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.
Until March, Japan explicitly forbid the growth of animal embryos containing human cells beyond 14 days or the transplant of such embryos into a surrogate uterus. That month Japan’s education and science ministry issued new guidelines allowing the creation of human-animal embryos that can be transplanted into surrogate animals and brought to term.
There's a debate over free speech taking place after Microsoft-owned GitHub "restricted" the account of a developer based in the Crimea region of Ukraine, who used the service to host his website and gaming software.
GitHub this week told Anatoliy Kashkin, a 21-year-old Russian citizen who lives in Crimea, that it had "restricted" his GitHub account "due to US trade controls".
Kashkin uses GitHub to host his website and GameHub, a launcher for Linux systems that combines games from Steam, GOG, and Humble Bundle in a single user interface.
Kashkin says GitHub advised him this week that it had restricted his account, pointing to its page about US trade controls, which lists Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria as countries facing US sanctions.
As the developer reports, his website https://tkashkin.tk, which is hosted on GitHub, now returns a 404 error. He also can't create new private GitHub repositories or access them.
While his website could easily be moved to another hosting provider, the block does pose a challenge for his work on GameHub, which has an established audience on GitHub.
Donald Trump appeared at a right-wing rally in front of a fake presidential seal, doctored to make apparently satiric references to Russia and golf.
The tweaked image flashed up on a screen behind the president as he spoke to a summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA in Washington earlier this week.
The normally solitary bald eagle was seen with two heads, made to resemble the two-headed bird on the official Russian coat of arms in a mocking nod to Mr Trump’s woes with investigations into Moscow’s election meddling.
The symbolic bird also showed up clutching a bag of golf clubs – evidently a joke about the president’s fondness for spending so much time on the links.
Both the White House and Turning Point USA said they were unaware of why or how the altered image appeared on the screen.
Nintendo’s got a problem on its hands. It’s called “Joy-Con Drift,” an issue where the analog sticks on the Switch’s detachable controllers, called Joy-Cons, begin moving things on the screen on their own. Following the huge response to a report by Kotaku, it’s become enough of an issue that Nintendo recently told customer service representatives the company will no longer charge customers seeking Joy-Con repairs, and refund those who’ve already paid, according to internal Nintendo documentation seen by VICE Games.
“Customers will no longer be requested to provide proof of purchase for Joy-Con repairs,” the internal customer service details say. “Additionally it is not necessary to confirm warranty status. If a customer requests a refund for a previously paid Joy-Con repair [...] confirm the prior repair and then issue a refund.”
The memo was provided to VICE Games by a source familiar with Nintendo's updated customer support documentation. We agreed to speak under the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about Nintendo's internal processes.
