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A concerned father says that after using his Android smartphone to take photos of an infection on his toddler’s groin, Google flagged the images as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a report from The New York Times. The company closed his accounts and filed a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and spurred a police investigation, highlighting the complications of trying to tell the difference between potential abuse and an innocent photo once it becomes part of a user’s digital library, whether on their personal device or in cloud storage.

Google AI flagged parents’ accounts for potential abuse over n**e photos of their sick kids Google scanned pictures taken to send to a doctor

For those unfamiliar, BeReal is a social network that’s an anti-social network in many ways. The app sends a notification to all users at a randomized time, informing them that it’s “time to BeReal.” In theory, users open BeReal immediately after receiving this notification, take a photo of whatever they happen to be doing at that time, and post it to the app. You can’t see anyone else’s BeReals until you post your own.

Stop using BeReal like Instagram You know who you are. Stop it.

The QA department at Blizzard Albany, the studio formerly known as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2’s Vicarious Visions, has become the second QA department within Activision Blizzard to organize a union.

Blizzard QA workers in Albany are organizing Activision’s second union "We are strong together and we know it."

New internal documents released Tuesday detail how three of Big Tech’s most prominent companies favored their own products as a means of stamping out competition. Their release comes as lawmakers push to approve stronger antitrust legislation by the end of the year.

The documents were obtained by the House Judiciary Committee as part of its lengthy investigation into anticompetitive behavior from Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook’s parent company Meta. The investigation wrapped up in 2020, but the newly published emails, memos, and reports provide new evidence backing the committee’s calls to advance tougher competition rules for the tech industry.

Internal documents show Facebook and Google discussing platform strategies The House Judiciary Committee published its final Big Tech antitrust report.

Instagram’s latest update aims to make it easier for users to find local businesses or attractions by adding a searchable map that lets you “discover popular local businesses near you,” according to an Instagram Story from Mark Zuckerberg. The map will show you a list of places nearby and will let you see posts about a certain place or see only certain types of business.

There are a few ways to get to the map — if someone tags a place in a post or story, you can tap on the tag and hit “see location” to get to the location’s page. If you move around on the map, yo

Instagram’s trying to make it easier to find nearby businesses Like Snap Map but for places to eat.

Another Samsung Unpacked virtual event is right around the corner, now confirmed to take place on August 10th at 9AM ET / 6AM PT, and along with it are some incentives for the early, early birds. Samsung is offering customers in the US the chance to put in free, no-commitment reservations for its upcoming devices on its website now, well ahead of preorders — and even the devices’ announcement.

Get up to $200 credit if you reserve Samsung’s next foldables The early promo is also for Galaxy smartwatches and earbuds.

Soon after NASA shared the first stunning images taken by the agency’s new, powerful James Webb Space Telescope, a new online opinion poll asked Americans: was the nearly $10 billion observatory a good investment? And the resounding answer: yes.

Today, marketing and data analytics firm YouGov released an online poll of 1,000 Americans, asking them their overall opinion of NASA and whether or not various space programs have been good investments. Roughly 70 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of NASA, and 60 percent thought that the James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, was worth it.

Most Americans think NASA’s $10 billion space telescope is a good investment, poll finds Don’t trouble yourself with the past when space pictures are in your future.

Netflix’s upcoming ad-supported offering won’t include all of the content you can currently watch on the streaming service, Netflix executives said during the company’s Q2 2022 earnings interview video.

“Today, the vast majority of what people watch on Netflix, we can include in the ad-supported tier,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said. “There are some things that don’t — that we’re in conversation about with the studios on — but if we launched the product today, the members in the ad tier would have a great experience. We will clear some additional content, but certainly not all of it, but we don’t think it’s a material holdback to the business.”

Netflix’s ad-supported tier won’t have everything at launch "We will clear some additional content, but certainly not all of it."

Samsung has provided a clear solution to the unusual puzzle it provided yesterday, confirming that its Galaxy Unpacked event will indeed take place on August 10th. The image included with the teaser also confirms that its foldables will be taking center stage, with a Galaxy Z Flip-shaped device acting as a “greater than” symbol. The event will start at 9AM ET and will be streamed on Samsung.com.

Based on the cryptic hint that Samsung dropped yesterday, along with the timing of last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 3 and Fold 3 launch, it was kind of a no-brainer to assume that we’d see updated foldable phones next month. If the phone in the invitation image is actually the Z Flip 4, then rumors that the device would feature minimal updates appear to be accurate. It seems to feature the same shape, rear dual-camera setup, and side-mounted power button / fingerprint scanner as the Flip 3. We’d also expect to see an update to the Z Fold 3 on the 10th, and rumors suggest it might have a slightly different-looking camera bump than its predecessor.

Samsung’s August 10th Unpacked will definitely feature at least one foldable The foldables are coming.

Though it’s now under the Sony umbrella, Bungie will “continue to independently publish and creatively develop our games,” Bungie CEO Pete Parsons said in a blog post from the original announcement of the acquisition. And future games in development won’t be PlayStation exclusives, Bungie’s Joe Blackburn and Justin Truman said.

But Sony does plan to lean on Bungie for its “world-class expertise in multi-platform development and live game services,” which “will help us deliver on our vision of expanding PlayStation to hundreds of millions of gamers,” Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said in January. Sony views live service games as a critical part of PlayStation’s future, as it plans to launch more than 10 new live service games by March 2026.

Bungie is now officially part of Sony Let the live service games begin.

Amazon’s Prime Air delivery drones will begin testing in Texas soon. The drone delivery tests are happening in College Station, Texas, along with a test area announced last month located in Lockeford, California.

The current MK27-2 design (shown above) has a hexagonal shape that Amazon says increases stability as well as propellers that the company claims will minimize high-frequency soundwaves.

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery tests are coming to Texas, too Amazon announced its drone delivery plans in 2013.

Halo Infinite’s network campaign co-op test flight is finally live, developer 343 Industries announced Friday. As part of the test, you’ll be able to play the campaign with up to three of your friends, and the game supports crossplay across Xbox One, Xbox Series X / S, and PC. The test also includes a mission replay feature, which wasn’t included with the game at launch.

Before you jump onto Zeta Halo with your friends, you should know that you’ll be starting the campaign from scratch in this test. Any progress you’ve made in the retail build of the game won’t carry over, and anything you accomplish in the test won’t show up in your retail build, either. But if it’s been a while since you played through Halo Infinite’s campaign, starting fresh with your pals could be a fun reason to revisit the game.

Halo Infinite’s network co-op test is now live A mission replay feature is included, too.

NothingNothing claims its new Phone 1 can “Bring us back. To us” with “deeper interactions” and “brave simplicity.” It’s not the life-changing phone that Nothing makes it out to be; it’s just a good midrange device with flashing lights on the back.

The Phone 1’s unique light-up notification “glyphs” are somewhat useful, but more than anything, they’re a fashion flourish. Given that it’s backed up by solid performance and fair price, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

Nothing Phone 1 review: something else Business in the front, party in the back.

VolkswagenVolkswagen might build the Transporter cargo van, but Frank Westland and his team at Ventje in the Netherlands are responsible for turning it into something special: a camper that lets you take your work or family off-grid for an extended weekend and still serve as your daily driver upon return. It’s “the only car you need,” according to the Ventje website.

That’s an interesting proposition at a time when flexible work arrangements implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have gone from temporary to permanent. As many as 38 percent of American workers are now able to work from home full time, according to a new McKinsey survey, with even more — 58 percent — able to work remotely at least part time.

Ventje’s VW campervans let you "work from home" from anywhere For flex workers and families looking for adventure.

Previously, a number of reviewers have reported that Apple’s entry-level M2 MacBook Pro’s SSD is significantly slower than that of the M1 MacBook Pro due to the configuration of the storage models in the computer. Apple confirmed to The Verge that the base M2 MacBook Air has the same storage configuration as the Pro, so, naturally, we’ve been wondering if it would suffer from the same issue. Well, we’ve finally gotten our hands on a base model (including 256GB of storage and 8GB of memory) and the answer is: yes, it does.

Going by the results we’re seeing in Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test app, the base model of the M2 MacBook Air has write speeds that are generally 15 to 30 percent slower than those of the 512GB model Apple sent The Verge to review — and read speeds that can be 40 to 50 percent slower.

This is not an unexpected result since the base Air only includes a single NAND chip, while the M1 models and 512GB (and up) M2 models have two, which can allow for nearly twice as fast speeds.

We benchmarked the base M2 MacBook Air’s storage and (surprise!) it’s slow The 512GB model beats the base model by a lot.

Spotify has quietly rolled out support for real-time lyrics on the Google Nest Hub, according to a report from 9to5Google. The feature, which has already been made available on iOS, Android, game consoles, desktop computers, and select smart TVs, lets you listen to music on Spotify while seeing a stream of lyrics that progresses with the song.

While Spotify hasn’t formally announced the feature’s launch, a number of users — including the folks over at 9to5Google — report spotting real-time lyrics on their Nest Hub devices. As 9to5Google notes, you can access the feature by tapping the lyrics icon that appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen when you select a song. The video embedded below shows the feature in action.

Spotify quietly rolls out real-time lyrics on the Nest Hub Now you can read real-time song lyrics from your Nest Hub.

Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by both Ford and Volkswagen, has laid off about 150 employees, as reported earlier by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. The move is supposed to offset a period of rapid growth, in which the company hired more employees than needed.

“With incredible growth and progress made in our mission to deploy driverless vehicles, we are making prudent adjustments to our business plan to best continue on a path for success,” Argo AI said in an emailed statement obtained by Bloomberg. The Verge reached out to Argo AI with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

As noted by the WSJ, the layoffs make up about 6 percent of the Pittsburgh-based company’s 2,000-person team. Argo AI was founded in 2016 by Bryan Salesky, the former head of hardware development for Google’s autonomous vehicles (AVs), and Peter Rander, who previously served as an engineering lead for Uber’s self-driving branch. Ford injected $1 billion into the company in 2017, and Volkswagen followed up with a $2.6 billion investment in 2020.

Ford-backed autonomous car startup Argo AI lays off 150 employees Argo AI has laid off about 6 percent of its workforce.

Microsoft is still planning to block Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros by default in Office apps. The software giant rolled back planned changes last week, surprising IT admins who had been preparing for Microsoft to prevent Office users from easily enabling macros in Office files downloaded from the internet. The change, designed to improve security in Office, was supposed to go live in June before Microsoft suddenly reverted the block on June 30th.

“Following user feedback, we have rolled back this change temporarily while we make some additional changes to enhance usability,” explains Kellie Eickmeyer, principal product manager at Microsoft, in a blog post update. “This is a temporary change, and we are fully committed to making the default change for all users.”

Microsoft still plans to block Office macros by default after temporary rollback The rollback is just temporary to improve usability.

You may not know it, or you may not need them, but your Mac comes with a bevy of accessibility features that help make your computer more accessible if you have disabilities. Apple is well-known for building best-in-class assistive technologies into all of their platforms — and the Mac, almost four decades old, is no exception. In fact, Apple has a knowledge base article all about the accessibility features of macOS.

When you explore the Accessibility pane in System Preferences, you’ll notice Apple has organized the system’s accessibility features across various developmental domains: Vision, Hearing, Motor, and General. There’s also an Overview tab where Apple concisely summarizes what accessibility does for you. “Accessibility features adapt your Mac to your individual needs,” the copy reads. “Your Mac can be customized to support your vision, hearing, physical motor, and learning & literacy requirements.” Accessibility features are turned off by default, but you can visit System Preferences to enable anything you need or want. Most are accessible system-wide via a keyboard shortcut.

Let’s examine each category and its features.

How to make the most of the Mac’s accessibility features A roundup of the Mac’s current accessibility options.

A trove of internal Uber documents leaked to The Guardian and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), as well as dozens of other news outlets, outlines its strategies for global expansion — even if the company had to bend some rules. The leak, collectively dubbed the Uber Files, consists of over 124,000 documents spanning the period between 2013 and 2017.

Uber has since responded to the leak in a post on its website, stating it “moved from an era of confrontation to one of collaboration” after CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took over following founder Travis Kalanick’s resignation in 2017.

According to The Guardian, the leak also “shows how Uber tried to shore up support by discreetly courting prime ministers, presidents, billionaires, oligarchs and media barons.” In addition to memos, presentations, notebooks, and other telling documents, the leak includes “emails, iMessages and WhatsApp exchanges between the Silicon Valley giant’s most senior executives.”

Uber leaks reveal how it spread "fu***ng illegal" ride-sharing globally The Uber Files reveal over 124,000 internal documents.

t’sIt’s the year 2022, and Henry Claypool still has trouble getting ride-sharing companies to send a wheelchair-accessible car to his home. Smartphone apps like Uber and Lyft were supposed to democratize transportation for marginalized groups — but for wheelchair users like Claypool, this was always a false promise.

“I live in Arlington, Virginia, still inside the square that makes up DC just across the river,” said Claypool, who is the former director of the Office on Disability in the US Department of Health and Human Services. “And I’ve never been able to hail a wheelchair-accessible vehicle to my location.”

Claypool, who has used a wheelchair since suffering a spinal cord injury during a skiing accident 30 years ago, says he is constantly flabbergasted by the inability of ride-share companies to provide equitable service to people with disabilities.

“I do think that there are ways to do that for people like myself, that might be in close proximity to an urban core, that would give them a more reliable access to transportation than they currently have,” said Claypool. “But these businesses don’t seem to be interested in exploring that right now.”

How the ride-sharing revolution failed passengers with disabilities In 2022, activists are still fighting for equitable service.