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President Joe Biden announced that 20 internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to people with low incomes, a program that could effectively make tens of millions of households eligible for free service through an already existing federal subsidy. “High speed internet is not a luxury any longer. It’s a necessity,” Biden said at a sun-drenched rose garden event with representatives from participating companies, as well as members of Congress. The $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress last year included $14.2 billion funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides $30 monthly subsidies ($75 in tribal areas) on internet service for millions of lower-income households. With the new commitment from the internet providers, some 48 million households will be eligible for $30 monthly plans for 100 megabits per…

Facial recognition startup Clearview AI has agreed to restrict the use of its massive collection of face images to settle allegations that it collected people’s photos without their consent. The company in a legal filing Monday agreed to permanently stop selling access to its face database to private businesses or individuals around the U.S., putting a limit on what it can do with its ever-growing trove of billions of images pulled from social media and elsewhere on the internet. The settlement — which must be approved by a county judge in Chicago — will end a 2-year-old lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups over alleged violations of an Illinois digital privacy law. The company still faces a separate privacy case before a federal judge in…

Electronic Arts will stop making its hugely successful FIFA video game in its current name, marking a split in one of soccer’s most successful and lucrative partnerships after the sides failed to strike a new licensing deal. Instead, the California company said that EA Sports FC will be introduced from 2023 after it creates the final game in partnership with FIFA later this year. Licensing rights for the game earn FIFA about $150 million annually — the single biggest commercial earner in its expected $7 billion total revenue from 2019-2022 — though FIFA struck a defiant tone in a statement published hours after the announcement of losing that income. FIFA promised a “number of new non-simulation games (that) are already under production” and will launch ahead of the 2022 World…

One of the more striking pieces of journalism from the Ukraine war featured intercepted radio transmissions from Russian soldiers indicating an invasion in disarray, their conversations even interrupted by a hacker literally whistling “Dixie.” It was the work of an investigations unit at The New York Times that specializes in open-source reporting, using publicly available material like satellite images, mobile phone or security camera recordings, geolocation and other internet tools to tell stories. The field is in its infancy but rapidly catching on. The Washington Post announced last month it was adding six people to its video forensics team, doubling its size. The University of California at Berkeley last fall became the first college to offer an investigative reporting class that focuses specifically on these techniques. Two video reports from…

Airbnb said it is overhauling the way that consumers search for rental listings, adding dozens of categories including “chef’s kitchens” and “historical homes” to its current listings, which are mostly searched by location. The company will also let people book split stays between homes and it promised new protections for renters when listings fall short of advertised promises. Airbnb said the changes will help people find listings that they didn’t know existed before and in locations that they had not considered, taking pressure off overtourism in popular destinations. CEO Brian Chesky called it the biggest change to the company’s site in a decade. The changes are being rolled out this week, in time for what Airbnb predicts will be a strong summer season for rentals. Last week, the company forecast…

WE Arcade Fire “It was already sort of all in the world,” Arcade Fire’s Win Butler said to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about the especially pandemic-relevant themes of isolation, desperation and fatalism permeating the Canadian indie rock group’s sixth studio album, WE. FIVE FACTS: 1. Butler added: “In order to write music, you have to have this antenna up that kind of picks up little signals from the future and signals from the past.” 2. WE is Arcade Fire’s first studio album since 2017’s Everything Now. 3. Butler’s younger brother Will also features on WE, despite having recently – and amicably – left the band. 4. Meanwhile, rock legend Peter Gabriel contributed guest vocals to the album. 5. In a Pitchfork review of WE, critic Sam Sodomsky said that it…

Google said that it struck licensing deals with 300 news publishers in Europe in its latest effort to comply with a recently introduced European Union copyright law. The tech giant signed the agreements with national, local and specialist news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland and said discussions with many others are ongoing. It didn’t disclose how much it’s paying or give names of the news outlets. European Union countries have been adopting into local law a 2019 EU directive granting publishers additional rights over their content. The new law allows search engines like Google to link to and use snippets of news content, while giving publishers new rights when extended previews are used online. It doesn’t, however, specify where the line between the two lies.…

Nvidia, a major tech company that has expanded aggressively into gaming, will pay a $5.5 million penalty for failing to disclose that cryptomining was a significant source of revenue growth from the sale of graphics processing units that were produced and marketed for gaming. Cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile and the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission said that the Santa Clara, California company did not disclose to investors in 2018 the potential future risks of such sales. “Nvidia’s disclosure failures deprived investors of critical information to evaluate the company’s business in a key market,” said Kristina Littman, Chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit. The company has also agreed to a cease-and-desist order, the SEC said. Nvidia did not admit or deny the SEC’s findings, and declined…

As Apple officially launches its Self Service Repair program in the United States, consumers can now purchase genuine Apple parts and tools and fix broken iPhones and Macs, setting a new standard for repairs and empowering consumers. The scheme offers real environmental benefits, cutting down on waste and extending the lifespan of the world’s most beloved tech. INTRODUCING SELF SERVICE REPAIR Earlier in the year, in an effort to appease regulators and counteract future challenges about the environment and its closed-off nature of repairs and replacement parts, Apple shocked the world by announcing plans to introduce a new self-service repair program. After months of trials and experimentation, the scheme has officially launched in the United States, with the Cupertino company offering repair manuals and genuine Apple parts and tools through…

Nintendo’s profit for the fiscal year ended in March was little changed from the previous year, edging down 0.6% to 477.7 billion yen ($3.7 billion), the Japanese video game maker behind the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises said this week. Sales for the fiscal year fell 3.6% to 1.7 trillion yen ($13 billion) as fewer Nintendo Switch machines were sold, and IP income from mobile content also declined, according to Kyoto-based Nintendo Co. But players around the world of the Nintendo Switch, including game fans in South America as well as Asia, now totaled some 102 million people, up from 87 million people the previous fiscal year, Nintendo said. Especially popular in Nintendo game software lately were“Pokemon Legends: Arceus”and a new Kirby game, according to Nintendo. Game makers have reaped…

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs wasted nearly $2 million when most of the smartphones bought during the pandemic for homeless veterans went unused, according to an inspector general’s report. The report found that the Veterans Health Administration spent nearly $7 million to purchase 10,000 phones with unlimited prepaid calling plans but that 85% of the phones gathered dust. As a result, it lost $1.8 million in wasted data plan costs. The inspector general also found that $571,000 was wasted on data plans due to poor oversight of its purchase of nearly 81,000 iPads. The smartphones and iPads were purchased as part of the efforts to increase homeless veterans’ access to telehealth, a program that saw video visits increase from about 2,500 in February 2020 to 38,000 in September 2020.…

Amazon has fired two employees with ties to the grassroots union that led the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant’s history. The company confirmed Tuesday that it fired Michal, or ‘Mat,’ Cusick and Tristan Dutchin of the Amazon Labor Union on Staten Island, New York. But it claims the “cases are unrelated to each other and unrelated to whether these individuals support any particular cause or group.” Cusick, who worked at a nearby Amazon warehouse from the one that voted to unionize last month, said he was fired due to COVIDrelated leave. He said he was informed by an agent from the company’s employee resource center that he was allowed to go on leave until April 29 but was later fired because leave period extended only until…

Black Site CIA agent Abby Trent (Michelle Monaghan) manages a top-secret black site facility where dangerous and high-risk detainees are held prisoner. However, one of these – a killer codenamed Hatchet (Jason Clarke) – escapes, throwing the underground prison into chaos. FIVE FACTS: 1. Sophia Banks was announced as the director of Black Site in January 2021. 2. Banks had previously been known for directing commercials and short films. 3. Black Site producer Erica Lee enthused in January 2021: “Sophia has a distinct visual approach and her take on Black Site blew us away.” 4. In a recent interview with Variety, Banks recalled that the crew “shot during COVID in Australia during quarantine” and “had five days to rehearse”. 5. She added that the film could potentially be the start…

A Chinese cargo vessel docked with the country’s under-construction space station Tuesday ahead of a new three-person crew expected to arrive next month. The Tianzhou-4 spacecraft was slung into space atop a Long March-7 Y5 rocket at 1:56 a.m. from the Wenchang Launch Base in the southern island province of Hainan. State media said it docked with the station about seven hours later. The cargo vessel is carrying supplies for the next crew’s six-month stay, along with research equipment and spare parts for maintaining the station. The station’s last crew returned to Earth last month after six months on the station, China’s longest space mission to date. China intends to finish building the station this year with the addition of two laboratory modules in July and October to link with…

A new type of scam has emerged in the hype-filled world of cryptocurrency: the “rug pull.” The scam, which gets its name from the expression “pulling the rug out,” involves a developer attracting investors to a new cryptocurrency project, then pulling out before the project is built, leaving investors with a worthless currency. It’s part of a long history of investment schemes. “This isn’t a crypto-only phenomenon. This is a people phenomenon. Crypto is just the latest way to do it,” says Adam Blumberg, a Houston-based certified financial planner who specializes in digital assets. But cryptocurrencies have particular risks due to loose regulations for fundraising and their emphasis on decentralization. Cryptocurrency projects often use “smart contracts,” agreements that are governed by computer software, not the legal system. This setup can…

More than 40 years after blazing a trail for female video game characters, Ms. Pac-Man was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, along with Dance Dance Revolution, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Sid Meier’s Civilization. The Hall of Fame considers electronic games of all types each year — arcade, console, computer, handheld and mobile. Inductees are recognized for their popularity and influence on the video game industry or pop culture over time. The Ms. Pac-Man arcade game was released in 1981 as Midway’s follow-up to Pac-Man, which entered the hall as part of the inaugural class in 2015. The Pac-Man sequel reimagined the main character to acknowledge the original game’s female fans, according to the hall. After selling 125,000 cabinets within the first five…

Meta opens first physical store Facebook parent Meta has opened its first physical store — in Burlingame, California — to showcase its hardware products like virtual and augmented reality goggles and glasses. The store, which is open to the public as of Monday, is made for people who want to test out products like Ray-Ban Stories, Meta’s AR glasses and sunglasses, along with the Portal video calling gadget and Oculus virtual reality headsets. Shoppers still have to order the glasses from Ray-Ban but can buy the other products at the store. “It’s a very concrete step from moving away from social media and ads that mislead people and elections and spying and data and all those things to a very physical representation of clean, classy, well-designed, cool hardware that makes…

As French chef and restaurateur Daniel Boulud puts it, “Kitchens should be designed around what’s truly important — fun, food, and life.” Kitchens now might not play the center-of-everything roles that they did during the early days of the pandemic. But even if you’re spending more time away, you’ll likely have become a little more attached and invested in the kitchen than you were in 2019. Some of what’s new in kitchen design and outfitting: COOKING WITH COLOR For a few years now, the monotone, all-white kitchen has been popular, with Instagram feeds full of white-and-cream cabinetry and pale woods. It looked clean, and like it meant business – a culinary clinic, if you will, and a far cry from the mid-2000s combo of cherry cabinets and granite counters. But…

My family didn’t travel much when I was a kid, but when we did, my parents jumped through hoops to cut costs. On a trip to Disney World, for example, our family of six switched hotels. Every. Night. My mom worked for a hotel chain and could get one free night per property. Did my parents save money? Yes. Did it add to the mental burden of traveling with four kids? Absolutely. As an adult now, planning a trip with my own child, I fully understand how expensive — and hard — it is to travel with kids. Planning and packing requires accounting for naps, snacks, tantrums and blowouts. And you’re budgeting for extra airfare, a bigger rental car and additional lodging. You can save money on family travel and…

Once a superhero franchise goes multiverse, it’s hard to go back. No work of fiction ever needs permission to break the rules or push the boundaries of traditional storytelling, but the multiverse, at least as it’s been served up in recent Marvel movies, practically demands it. And for the moment that means a lot of cameo opportunities. “ Spider-Man: No Way Home ” opened the door to the concept, to mostly charming results, but now Benedict Cumberbatch’s master of the mystic arts is flying through the interdimensional portal with the concept in “ Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” This film is technically the sequel to “Doctor Strange,” a movie that came out six years ago. But so much has happened in Marvel land that involves Stephen Strange and…

New homes built in California starting in 2026 need to be powered by all-electric furnaces, stoves and other appliances if California is to meet its ambitious climate change goals over the next two decades, according to a state pollution-reduction plan released this week. The roadmap by the California Air Resources Board sets the state on a path to achieve “carbon neutrality” by 2045, meaning as much carbon is removed from the air as is emitted. The state’s timeline is among the most ambitious in the nation; Hawaii has a similar goal and some other states have a 2050 deadline. California could reach its goals through a drastic transition away from fossil fuels that power cars, trucks, planes, ships, homes, businesses and other sectors of the economy. The board staff recommends…