A total of 146 of 164 government-endorsed ed tech products endangered the privacy of children, with 199 third-party companies receiving personal data, the HRW said. Further, only 35 endorsed vendors disclosed that user data would be collected for behavioural advertising, whilst a total of 23 products were developed with children as primary users in mind. “In the absence of alternatives, children faced a singular choice whether they were aware of it or not: Attend school and use an ed tech product that infringes upon their privacy, or forgo the product altogether, be marked as absent, and be forced to drop out of school during the pandemic,” the HRW wrote in its report How dare they peep into my private life....

The EU Parliament, Council, and Commission late last week agreed to the new rules, the Digital Markets Act, with EU lawyers now checking the legal text to finalise how the laws will operate. Once finalised, the details of the Digital Markets Act will be made publicly available and sent through to the EU Parliament and Council for approval. Once approved, the Act will go into effect 20 days after its publication and its rules would apply six months after....

The ads will initially start appearing in the Resolution Games-developed Blaston as well as games from a “couple other developers” in the coming weeks. Depending on user feedback, Facebook may expand the ads as part of efforts to make the Oculus Quest a self-sustaining platform. “Once we see how this test goes and incorporate feedback from developers and the community, we’ll provide more details on when ads may become more broadly available across the Oculus Platform and in the Oculus mobile app,” the company said in a blog post....

The agency’s four commissioners voted unanimously to revoke the licence of China Unicom’s US subsidiary, with the agency explaining that the telco’s presence in the US posed a national security risk for the Chinese government to access, store, disrupt, and misroute US communications and engage in espionage. “In March 2021, the Commission found that China Unicom Americas had failed to dispel serious concerns regarding its retention of its authority to provide telecommunications services in the United States,” the FCC said in a statement....

Inflation was measured in June at 9.1%, a four-decade high. According to Fed Chairman Powell, PCE prices – the cost of goods and services – rose 6.3% in the 12 months ending in May. By increasing interest, the Fed hopes to cool down the economy, and therefore get the cost of goods back under control. The target inflation rate is just 2%, well below where it currently stands. Higher interest rates mean greater interest for credit products and loans including mortgages and credit cards....

The new Dev Channel build doesn’t include any major changes but does remove a few experiments Microsoft has tested with some users for the past month. In build 25247 from November, Microsoft tested a new suggested action that suggested searching for copied text in Edge. It also started showing recommended common websites based on the user’s region and browsing history to speed up access to those websites. These features have now been removed in line with Microsoft’s condition for the Dev channel that features tested there may never make it beyond into the mainstream....

Fortive also said its revenue in the June quarter had risen faster than it had previously forecast. Fortive shares were unchanged in late trading at $70.45. Said Fortive CEO James A. Lico, ServiceChannel “fits extremely well alongside Accruent and Gordian,” referring to Fortive software programs for facilities management, and construction cost estimation, respectively. The ServiceChannel software will “broaden our offering of software-enabled solutions for the Facility and Asset Lifecycle workflow,” he said....

Google’s decision to force the transition to Workspace rankled non-business users who set up a free G Suite account over a decade ago. Google stopped offering the free edition to new customers in December 2012 but kept the service alive. Then last week it informed users that this edition will cease on July 1, 2022, and that they’d have until May 1 to pick an alternative paid-for Workspace account. The G Suite legacy free edition let users have a Google email address ending with their own website domain rather than the “@gmail....

Drones can capture stunning aerial photography, so it’s hard to resist adding one to your cart. However, many models aren’t made for travel. That’s a shame, since you’d probably want to use it when visiting new places. Fortunately, Ineedmeone offers an affordable, lightweight folding drone you can take anywhere. This 360° Flip Drone offers powerful cameras with 50x zoom to let you view subjects at a distance. You can use gesture photography to capture images and transmit them to your phone in real-time....

The lamp is beautiful in its own right, with a space-saving design that fits in most corners. The metal finish is understated, so it’ll look great with any décor. It also has a weighted rubber bottom, so it will safely stay where you put it and won’t scratch your floors. Most importantly, this lamp is like a chameleon, staying out of sight when shut off but vibrant and alluring when on....

There are so many situations where you might urgently need extremely bright light and not only is there not one around, there doesn’t even seem to be anywhere to put one. That is when you will be so very happy to have your own ultra-powerful light source right in your pocket. And that is exactly what you get with the 8-in-1 Maglight Mini Super Bright Utility Flashlight, which happens to be available right now for just $17....

The streaming service boasts over 90 million songs to listen to, plus if you enjoy watching music videos, there are over 450 thousand to catch while you’re on the go. You won’t have to worry about any ads on this tier, and you can listen to your music offline, which is great if you’re commuting in areas with low to no 5G reception but still want to listen to your tunes....

On July 22, GitHub staff product manager William Bartholomew said in a blog post that Go – also known as Golang – is now firmly entrenched in the top 15 programming languages on the platform, and as the most popular host for Go modules, GitHub wants to help the community “discover, report, and prevent security vulnerabilities.” Introduced in 2019, Go modules were designed to improve dependency management. According to the Go Developer Survey 2020, 76% of respondents said that Go is now used in some form in the enterprise....

The feature is another way GitHub users can enable two-factor authentication alongside security keys and WebAuthn, one-time passcodes, and SMS. “GitHub Mobile provides a strong alternative to existing one-time passcode options offered by third-party applications and via SMS, with an experience that is fully baked into the GitHub services you already use,” Veral said. “GitHub is committed to keeping our platform secure and enabling developers to secure their accounts. One way we’re doing that is by helping more developers adopt two-factor authentication (2FA) for their accounts....

Android 12L is currently available for developers to begin building and testing their apps against using the Android 12L emulator via Android Studio. Google focussed on addressing multitasking on large screen Android devices – including the ability to open multiple apps in split-screen mode just by dragging an app icon from the taskbar at the bottom of the display to either side of the screen. There’s also a new compatibility mode that will force unoptimized apps to show up as phone apps, in a single column, instead of spreading across the entire screen, as is the case with most Android apps now....

Powered by Ampere Altra Arm-based processors, T2A VMs come in multiple predefined VM shapes, with up to 48 vCPUs per VM and 4GB of memory per vCPU. They offer up to 32 Gbps networking bandwidth and a range of network-attached storage options. The new VM family follows last year’s launch of Tau VMs to Google Cloud Compute Engine. Those chips target customers looking for a price-performance improvement without redesigning their Arm architecture applications....

Until they reach a certain age, that is. Many people love their Pixels. Relatively few actually buy them. And, well, just as with cult stars, there have been some unimpressive Pixel performances on occasion. On the other hand, Google has lately presented its Pixels in such an engaging way that you want to (almost) forgive all the half-heartedness with which the company manages the brand. Not too long ago, there was Google winningly advertising its accident calling feature....

The court found Google imposed various contractual obligations, including a 30% commission fee, against developers without providing them with the opportunity to negotiate in good faith, according to a Bloomberg report. The decision comes after four years of litigation from France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who raised lawsuits against Apple and Google as he found the tech giants were not playing fair with French developers and startups. Along with the €2 million fine, the Parisian court has reportedly ordered Google to amend seven clauses from contracts dated back to 2015 and 2016, including clauses that required developers to provide a 30% commissioner on revenues generated on apps downloaded from the Play Store....

The search giant’s first attempt to replace the third-party cookie with its own technology was met with staunch opposition from some, a wary eye from others, and very little positive feedback. It originally committed, in early 2021, to ending third-party cookie support within its Chrome browser in 2022. At that time, Google intended for FLoC to replace cookies with a new technology which it claimed was far more anonymized and still able to yield conversion rates of 95% for every ad dollar spent....

It’s a similar “event type” in Google Calendar as Out of Office and is marked in Calendar with a headphone icon. Focus time also lets users automatically decline conflicting events and, handily, also has a check box to “automatically decline meetings”. That’s useful for all those workers out there who are fed up with online chats and video meetings since the pandemic began last March. SEE: Remote working jobs row shows how much tech has changed “With the changes to our working environments in the past year, having more chats and meetings makes it more difficult for people to carve out time for their core individual work....