Charlotte Henry

IBM announced it will no longer develop or sell facial recognition software in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, Computing reported. Big Blue revealed the decision in a letter to members of Congress on Tuesday.

In a letter to the members of the US Congress, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said that the company would no longer sell general purpose facial recognition software and would also oppose use of such technology for racial profiling, mass surveillance, violations of basic human rights or any purpose “which is not consistent with our values and principles of trust and transparency”. IBM’s decision to quit the facial recognition services has come at the time when US faces countrywide demonstrations over the tragic death of George Floyd, a black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis.

The Swiss coronavirus contact tracing app looks set to be released later this month after the country’s Parliament gave its approval Monday. SwissCovid is based on the Apple/Google framework.

The SwissCovid app, whose use is voluntary, uses Bluetooth short-range radio and technology from Apple and Google to detect when a user has spent time close to another app user. It stores the data on the user’s mobile phone for 21 days, allowing notification of close encounters with infected people. Around 30% of smartphones in Europe run on Apple’s iOS operating system, with nearly all of the rest using Google’s Android. Together they host 99% of the world’s smartphones.

The Xbox Series X is on its way and we were meant to be hearing the hype at E3 this week. But, like Apple, Microsoft has not let the coronavirus pandemic deter it from releasing new products, and Xbox chief Phil Spencer spoke to BBC News about unveiling it at this time.

You can buy a console, buy some games, and it can literally provide your family with hundreds of hours of entertainment. Even when we went back and looked at 2008-09, in that recession, to see what the impact was on gaming – gaming did OK. It was durable. We want to make sure we’re providing the right value to customers. Price is going to be important. But our strategy is centred around the player, not the device.

Both Google and Apple have updated voice results responding to queries around the phrase “all lives matter.” The Google Assistant provides a better answer, reported 9to5Mac, but Siri does still point users to the Black Lives Matter website.

Siri’s response is accurate, but Google provides a far better explanation of why ‘all lives matter’ is tone-deaf. Siri does, though, go on to point people to blacklivesmatter.com. ‘All lives matter’ is a response often given by overt racists, but is also used by some who simply fail to understand that there are issues which affect black people more than others. There have been many attempts to reach the latter through tweets, essays, Reddit posts, videos, and cartoons. A few of these can be found below.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has resigned from the company’s board and asked for his seat to be filled by black candidate. In a blog post, Mr. Ohanian, who is married to tennis superstar Serena Williams, also said he would use any future gains from Reddit stock to serve black community and racial equality organizations.

I’m writing this as a father who needs to be able to answer his black daughter when she asks: “What did you do?” I have resigned as a member of the reddit board, I have urged them to fill my seat with a black candidate, and I will use future gains on my Reddit stock to serve the black community, chiefly to curb racial hate, and I’m starting with a pledge of $1M to Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp. I believe resignation can actually be an act of leadership from people in power right now. To everyone fighting to fix our broken nation: do not stop.

The Information has a great deep dive into how Apple learned that humans can actually surpass automation. There is also a good write-up over on AppleInsider.

Since Apple redesigns its major hardware in at least some way every year, it would also have to redesign the automated factory lines. Compared to that, training workers on new designs is vastly easier and quicker. Plus, one reason both Foxconn and Apple were interested in automation is that as well as being dependent on workers, that dependency fluctuates greatly. Foxconn was having problems recruiting enough staff for the peak periods just after, say, an iPhone launch. Automation would theoretically reduce that problem, but Apple already has a way of removing it. When it needs to, Apple is currently able to switch production to other companies. If there’s a problem or if more production is needed, it has alternative sources it can leverage.

Elon Musk doesn’t like monopolies. He also appears to not like Amazon, if his latest tweets, reported on by Bloomberg News, are anything to go by. They included his declaration that it’s “time to break up Amazon.”

“Monopolies are wrong,” Musk tweeted while tagging Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man. Musk’s post came in response to a tweet from a writer who said his book titled “Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and The Lockdown” was being removed from Amazon’s Kindle publishing division for violating unspecified guidelines. With more than 35 million followers, Musk is a prolific tweeter. He has been criticized in the past for his posts on various subjects ranging from the coronavirus outbreak to Tesla stock. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Recent rumors suggest that the iOS 14, likely to revealed at WWDC towards the end of the month, will work on devices going as far back as the iPhone 6s. Which is pretty impressive. Christine Chan at iMore thinks it shows Android device makers have a lot to learn from Apple.

It’s actually quite impressive that Apple continues to support its devices for so long, especially when you compare it to Android devices. With Android, you have hundreds or even thousands of different hardware devices from different manufacturers, and these range from being super cheap models to flagship devices. Google releases a new version of Android every year, and for the most part, Google’s own Pixel devices get first dibs on new software updates. At the same time, other handsets need to wait for their manufacturer to modify that software before it reaches users, and sometimes, others are just left out entirely. And who knows how long it takes before that update reaches a specific manufacturer’s hardware? So even if you buy a flagship Android device today, there’s no guarantee that it will still be getting support or updates five years down the road. So when compared to Apple, where even a five-year-old iPhone 6s will be getting support through at 2021 with the latest iOS 14, it’s a bit of a letdown.