Technology

Amazon is covertly monitoring private social media groups used by Amazon Flex workers to discuss their working conditions. According to what appear to be official company documents discovered online by Vice, the retailing giant employs staff to track and categorize discussions in closed Facebook groups, public subreddits, and on Twitter. Some posts are then “escalated” to internal Amazon teams and company leadership. As Vice notes, these reports are seemingly compiled primarily to identify and respond to complaints from Flex delivery drivers about things like bugs in the company’s app. But Amazon also appears to be keeping tabs on more sensitive discussions. Those compiling the reports are instructed to note the apparent sentiment of posts and to look for Flex employees sharing news storie...

LG has provided the first public acknowledgement of its rumored “Wing” handset, said to be a device with two screens in a swiveling form factor. A teaser video posted to YouTube hints at the sliding mechanism and serves as an invitation to an announcement event on September 14th. In a separate press release, LG says the new device will be part of an initiative and product category it calls the Explorer Project. The project is intended to “deliver much-needed curiosity and excitement to the mobile sector,” LG says, and “will focus solely on new usability that is discovered with innovative designs.” The recently released Velvet, meanwhile, will form part of LG’s “Universal Line.” Reporting on the Wing so far has indicated that it’ll have one screen behind another that can be rotated 90 degre...

After teasing for a while, ZTE has followed through on its promise to launch the world’s first commercial smartphone with a selfie camera embedded in the display. The Axon 20 5G turns out to be a fairly mid-range device, aside from its headline feature. ZTE says the under-display 32-megapixel camera has been made possible due to the use of “high transparency material that includes new organic and inorganic films” as well as optimized software algorithms to offset the impact on image quality. Of course, it’s hard to judge this without seeing the phone in person and testing the camera in practice. It’s also questionable how much value the feature offers over a hole-punch, a pop-up, or even a notch. But we’ll see. The phone is based around a Snapdragon 765G processor, which is likely what all...

Nvidia might have just announced its RTX 3080 successor to the RTX 2080, but the company also had a surprise giant GPU ready: the RTX 3090. While the RTX 3080 will ship with 10GB of GDDR6X memory, the RTX 3090 ships with a huge 24GB of GDDR6X memory. Nvidia is promising that the RTX 3090 will be capable of 60fps gaming at 8K resolutions. This new flagship card is more akin to Nvidia’s Titan series and will ship on September 24th priced at $1,499. The RTX 3090 is based on Nvidia’s Ampere GPU architecture, which promises some impressive performance gains for PC gaming and ray tracing. Nvidia claims the RTX 3090 is the “world’s first 8K gaming GPU,” with 8K HDR ShadowPlay support, HDMI 2.1, and a whole lot more. Nvidia is using 10,496 CUDA cores on the RTX 3090, combined with a boost clock of...

Dr Disrespect says he still doesn’t know why he was banned from Twitch, and he warned viewers that the mysterious ban has been causing him anxiety. “My anxiety levels are something that comes in these huge waves,” said Dr Disrespect, real name Guy Beahm, on a stream compilation posted to YouTube this afternoon. “And I’m having a hard time dealing with it. I’ll be honest.” Twitch signed Beahm to an exclusive contract at the beginning of the year. But in June, his account disappeared from the platform, and Twitch refused to say why or even confirm that he had been banned. It was a big surprise given that Beahm was one of the platform’s top streamers. The ban came amid criticisms about Twitch failing to deal with sexual harassment, though no complaints had been publicly made about Beahm. “Not...

Gogo, the in-flight internet provider, has found a buyer for its commercial airline business. Intelsat, the world’s second largest satellite operator by revenue, has agreed to purchase Gogo’s Wi-Fi business for $400 million in cash, the companies announced Tuesday. It’s an unlikely pairing, mostly because Intelsat filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. The bankruptcy was seen as a means for Intelsat to begin paying down its nearly $15 billion debt load while positioning itself to participate in a Federal Communications Commission spectrum clearing program, the company has said. The FCC is clearing out the C-band (4-8 GHz) to make space for 5G customers, and Intelsat is participating in the program that could net the company nearly $5 billion by selling airwave licenses it currently owns. ...

Amazon has deleted two job listings posted to its corporate employment website detailing “intelligence analyst” roles that involved, among other duties, monitoring “labor organizing threats” within the company. The listings, which were posted days ago, first began circulating on Twitter earlier today, before Amazon removed them in response to widespread outcry on social media. The company now claims the listings were not accurate representations of the roles, according to CNBC. “The job post was not an accurate description of the role — it was made in error and has since been corrected,” an Amazon representative said in a statement, although Amazon does not appear to be offering any information as to how the listings were inaccurate. The job listings were for positions within Amazon’s glob...

Apple on Tuesday released iOS 13.7, adding support for a new exposure notification system for powering COVID-19 tracking. The system is an extension of the existing coronavirus contact tracing efforts, but it removes the burden on states of having to build a dedicated app. News of the new software framework was first announced earlier today in a joint statement from Apple and Google. This native support was expected, as it was announced when the exposure notification API — developed collaboratively between Apple and Google — was revealed in April. But at the time, we didn’t know exactly when it would arrive. Here’s how it will work, from The Verge’s report on the announcement: Under the new system, participating health departments will assemble a configuration file, allowing them to set th...

OnlyFans confirmed new rule changes to The Verge today that could impact how much money creators make on the platform, as well as how quickly they get paid. The new rules include a $100 cap on paid private messages, compared to $200 before, and a $50 cap on pay-per-view posts for creators who don’t charge a subscription, compared to $200 previously. There’s also a new maximum tip price of $100 for the first four months a creator is active on the site. After that point, it increases to $200, which was the standard for all creators up until this point. OnlyFans is also lengthening the pending payout period from seven to 21 days for creators in 14 countries, including India, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela. OnlyFans says the changes reflect an “evolving process” that’s m...

Vlambeer, the indie studio behind beloved games such as Super Crate Box, Nuclear Throne, and Ridiculous Fishing, is shutting down. The developer, which celebrates its 10th anniversary today, announced the news on Twitter. “We had a beautiful run, made incredible games, and worked with amazing people, but it is time for new things,” the developer said. “So we’re announcing the end of Vlambeer.” The Dutch studio was founded in 2010 by Jan Willem Nijman and Rami Ismail and has been a stalwart of the indie community. Vlambeer has been especially vocal on issues of game clones; Ismail is a well-known advocate within the community for topics like diversity and independent development. “It’s not a sad day for us, but the happy conclusion to a whirlwind decade filled with screenshake,” the develop...

If you’re on the hunt for a gaming laptop to help you run your games at reasonably fast frame rates that will also serve as a great all-around machine for non-gaming tasks, the Razer Blade 15 is a solid option. You can get this machine at Amazon for $400 off its original price, which brings it down to $1,400. It comes with Intel’s competent six-core Core i7-10750H processor, Nvidia’s RTX 2060 graphics chip, 16GB of RAM, and a fast 512GB SSD. Its 15.6-inch 1080p display has a 144Hz refresh rate, raising the ceiling of how smoothly games can run on the laptop. This feature also allows for fluid scrolling outside of games. Razer’s Blade 15 costs more than many other 15.6-inch gaming laptops, but it’s worth considering if you want stellar build quality and a Thunderbolt 3 port, which can be us...

Netflix on Tuesday announced that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners of HBO’s Game of Thrones, are working on an adaptation of Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy as their first major project since signing exclusive contracts with the streaming service last year. “Liu Cixin’s trilogy is the most ambitious science-fiction series we’ve read, taking readers on a journey from the 1960s until the end of time, from life on our pale blue dot to the distant fringes of the universe. We look forward to spending the next years of our lives bringing this to life for audiences around the world,” reads the duo’s joint statement. “We look forward to spending the next years of our lives bringing this to life for audiences around the world.” Known formally a...