TMO Deals

Newport Plus Adjustable Water Resistance Rower: $1,099

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on the Newport Plus Adjustable Resistance Rower. There’s no tech connection for this device, but it’s a cool rower that uses the properties of fluid to offer natural-feeling resistance to your rowing. It also has a maximum weight limit of 300 lbs. It’s priced at US$1,099 through our deal.

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TikTok Facing New Data Probe in France

Charlotte Henry ·

France’s privacy watchdog opened a probe into TikTok on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. The Chinese-owned video-sharing app is facing ongoing scrutiny of its privacy policies in Europe, alongside takeover talk in the U.S.

The French authority, CNIL, is looking at a number of issues, including how the company communicates with users and the protection of children, a spokesman said Tuesday. The questions are part of an investigation into TikTok’s plan to set up a European Union headquarters for data purposes. The EU’s data protection chiefs in June pledged to coordinate potential investigations into the Chinese company, establishing a taskforce to get a better understanding of “TikTok’s processing and practices across the EU.” The EU taskforce would also likely give the final decision on plans by the company to set up an EU base for data purposes in Ireland. This could mean that future probes would be led by the Irish data authority, which is already the lead privacy regulator for tech giants, including Google, Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc.

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Latest Version of Android Enables Earthquake Detection System

Charlotte Henry ·

The latest version of Android includes a new worldwide earthquake detection system. Meanwhile, in California, Google is United States Geological Survey (USGS) and California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), to provide earthquake alerts, reported Techcrunch. 

The highlight of today’s release is surely Google’s new worldwide earthquake detection system and the new earthquake alerting feature it is launching for California. With this, Google is essentially turning your Android phone into a seismometer to create what the company says is “the world’s largest earthquake detection network.” The company argues that smartphone accelerometers are sensitive enough to measure the P-waves that are the first waves to arrive after an earthquake. Whenever the phone thinks it has detected an earthquake, it will send that info to a central server which then determines whether this was really an earthquake. For now, Google will only use this data to show information when somebody then searches for ‘earthquake’ or a similar keyword. Over time, though, it expects to be able to send out alerts based on these phone-based systems.