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Amazon Requires Police to Promote its Ring Surveillance Cameras

Andrew Orr ·

As part of a secret agreement, Amazon requires that police “encourage adoption” of its Ring doorbell surveillance cameras.

Dozens of police departments around the country have partnered with Ring, but until now, the exact terms of these partnerships have remained unknown. A signed memorandum of understanding between Ring and the police department of Lakeland, Florida, and emails obtained via a public records request, show that Ring is using local police as a de facto advertising firm. Police are contractually required to “Engage the Lakeland community with outreach efforts on the platform to encourage adoption of the platform/app.”

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Winners of 12th iPhone Photography Awards Announced

Andrew Orr ·

The winners of the 12th iPhone Photography Awards have been announced, chosen from thousands of entries.

The grand prize winner is Gabriella Cigliano of Italy for her entry “Big Sister,” shot on an iPhone X in Zanzibar, Africa: Last year I spent a month in Wasa, Tanzania, teaching a class of young, curious and amazing guys. Before heading back to Italy we stopped in Zanzibar, where this photo was taken.

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Google's AMP URL Technology Spreads to Images

Andrew Orr ·

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a Google invention that is meant to speed up web pages on mobile devices. But since it wraps the page in a Google-controlled container, it’s a harmful technology to the open web. The company has started to bring AMP URL technology for Google Images.

When you select an image, you’ll see a preview of the website header at the bottom of the screen. You can keep scrolling through Google Images, or swipe up on the preview to load the AMP (accelerated mobile pages) version of the site.

Earlier I found a shortcut that can clean AMP URLs. Or, use an alternative search engine like DuckDuckGo.

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Brits Abandon TV News for Social Media

Charlotte Henry ·

A new survey confirmed what many of us suspected already – young people have abandoned TV news. UK regulator Ofcom also found that half the UK now gets its news from social media, the Guardian reported.

Young people in Britain have almost entirely abandoned television news broadcasts, according to Ofcom, while half of the country now gets its news from social media. While the average person aged 65 and over watches 33 minutes of TV news a day, this falls to just two minutes among people aged 16-24, according the media regulator’s annual news consumption report. The decline has been driven by audiences moving away from traditional live broadcast channels, where they might watch a popular drama and leave the channel on during the evening news bulletin, towards watching catchup content from streaming services.

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Tinder Update Protects LGBT People Abroad

Charlotte Henry ·

Tinder introduced a new feature to help LGBT users in countries with discriminatory laws, Techcrunch reported. The feature means the profiles of users who identify as LGBT will not show up on the app in those countries.

As part of the update, users who identify on the app as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer will no longer automatically appear on Tinder when they arrive in an oppressive state. This feature, which Tinder dubs the Traveler Alert, relies on your phone’s network connection to determine its location. From there it will give users the choice to keep their location private. If users opt-in to make their profile public again, Tinder will hide their sexual orientation or gender identity from their profile to safeguard the information from law enforcement and others who may target them, the company said. Once a user leaves the country or changes their location, their profile will become visible again.