Apple was hit with a wave of criticism earlier this year when it announced plans to scan iPhones to stop the distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). Critics fretted that Apple’s hash-checking system could be co-opted by governments to spy on law-abiding iPhone users. In response to the backlash, Apple might end up making changes to that program, but Google has its own way of spotting CSAM, and it might be even more intrusive for those who use all of Google’s cloud services. The specifics on Google’s CSAM scanning come by way of a warrant issued in early 2020 and .
Virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are supposed to help you get things done and make life at least a little easier. However, almost made life a little shorter for one family. According to Twitter user Kristin Livdahl, Alexa told her 10-year-old daughter to stick a penny in a power outlet as a “challenge.” Luckily, the parents were around to make sure that didn’t happen. According to Livdahl, her daughter asked the family’s Echo speaker for a challenge, and Alexa came up with something called the “Outlet Challenge.” It’s something that spread on TikTok for a bit earlier this year, encouraging the easily swayed to insert a phone charger halfway into an outlet and then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.
(Image: Ithome)We love SSDs for so many reasons: they’re silent, they move data so much faster than hard drives it’s orgasmic at times, they’re tiny and easy to tuck out of the way, they’re affordable in reasonable capacities, and they don’t get very hot, or at least current models don’t. Though all these traits will remain true for the foreseeable future, that last one might become a “legacy feature” soon with the arrival of power-hungry PCIe 5.0 SSDs. As CES 2022 draws near, manufacturers have begun announcing radical cooling products for SSDs that were seen as something as a novelty in the past, but may become more prominent as drive performance rapidly escalates.
Inside one of Riot Games’ offices. (Photo: Hughes Marino)Current and former Riot Games employees have found victory in a $100 million payout soon to be made by the video game publisher. In settling a three-year discrimination class action lawsuit, Riot has agreed to issue a total of $80 million to the settlement class and cover $20 million in legal fees. Employees’ legal battle with Riot began back in 2018, when one then-current and one former employee initiated a class action lawsuit on the basis of unequal pay, discrimination in hiring practices, and sexual harassment. According to a Kotaku released around the same time, the employees alleged that Riot routinely came up with excuses not to hire women into leadership roles and preferred ideas suggested by male employees, even after female employees had already presented those same ideas.
Update (12/29/2021): It’s the end of the year, so we’re surfacing a few old favorites from earlier in 2021. The “M2” referred to below refers to the Apple SoCs that eventually shipped as the M1 Pro and M1 Max. Original story below: With Apple’s WWDC coming up soon, we’re expecting to hear more about the company’s updated, ARM-based MacBook Pro laptops. Rumors point to Apple launching a slate of upgraded systems, this time based around its “M2” CPU, a scaled-up version of the M1 core that debuted last year. The M2 could reportedly field eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores, up from a 4+4 configuration in the existing M1.
If you’re the type of web content consumer who likes your monitor rotated vertically so you don’t have to scroll as much, the new LG DualUP (28MQ780) should be right up your alley. Instead of the typical widescreen, rectangular shape we’ve been using for about 15 years, LG has chosen what is essentially a square shape for the DualUP, making it the perfect size for people who want to see an entire webpage at once, or presumably for people who write code for a living. It’s essentially like taking two small monitors and stacking them vertically on top of one another.
(Photo: Habitat for Humanity Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg )Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit that builds and repairs homes in partnership with lower-income families and individuals, has officially signed over its first 3D printed home. Habitat for Humanity partnered with to build the 1200-square-foot house in Williamsburg, VA. Alquist, a large-scale 3D printing company, aims to make home ownership more accessible across demographics using advanced, environmentally-friendly building techniques. Not only does the company’s strategy reduce build time, but its 3D printed concrete homes are said to boast longer life expectancies than traditional wood-framed structures. Concrete walls also stand up well against tornadoes and hurricanes and help to reduce homeowners’ energy bills, as they offer better insulation than wood and drywall.
If you were considering upgrading your gaming rig to Intel’s new Alder Lake platform, and dropping in some DDR5 memory modules, memory manufacturer Micron has some bad news for you. The company confirmed in an earnings call recently that production of the next-gen memory modules is quite difficult at this time due to a shortage of required components, and the situation isn’t going to improve until the middle of next year, probably. For the uninitiated, Alder Lake is the first PC platform that supports DDR5 memory, which will eventually replace the DDR4 memory that we all use now. Compared to its predecessor, DDR5 is better in almost every way, offering more memory bandwidth, increased memory density per module, and higher clock speeds.
Valve’s Steam storefront has been nominally available in China for years, but the company launched a China-specific store earlier this year. Now, the other shoe has dropped. Chinese authorities appear to have blocked the global Steam domain, leaving affected gamers with only the much smaller (and government-approved) Steam China domain. The Chinese government has been slow to accept video games as a legitimate form of media. It didn’t even allow game consoles in the country from 2000 until 2015, and restrictions have been ramping up even on mobile games. For example, China has instituted limits on how long children are allowed to play games, and a few publishers have even implemented creepy features in their games to enforce the restrictions.
