Tech

The California Department of Industrial Relations says that Amazon didn’t provide employees written notice of quotas they have to follow — a requirement of the Warehouse Quotas law. “The employer argued they did not need a quota system because they use a peer-to-peer evaluation system,” according to a press release.

The regulator found more than 59,000 violations across two warehouses.

It was the #1 most-played game yesterday evening, and it’s #1 again right now, as player counts for both it and Counter-Strike dip from their daily peaks of over 800,000 concurrents. As Polygon explains, not everyone’s clicking the banana continuously — you only need to click once every few hours. Guess I wasted 1335 clicks!

Screenshots for posterity:

CMF by Nothing’s “Phone 1” looks like it will have a cool rotating dial — perhaps like the CMF Buds. You can see a few more teases of the phone on CMF by Nothing’s X account, and for rumored specs, check out 91Mobiles.

The Phone 1 will be announced on July 8th at 5AM ET alongside the Buds Pro 2 and the Watch Pro 2.

The terrorist group published eight videos in English and Arabic across two YouTube channels, according to a report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. One of the channels was branded to look like it was affiliated with CNN, while the other had the Al Jazeera logo.

One of the fake broadcasts was about ISIS’s attack of Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, which Russia falsely blamed on Ukraine.

This time from the Department of Justice, after the Federal Trade Commission said it was referring a complaint to the agency based on an investigation involving a children’s privacy law. The FTC said it doesn’t usually make this kind of referral public, but believed it in the public interest. TikTok said it “strongly disagree[s]” with the allegations and said many of them are outdated.

When Apple created the Dynamic Island to make the notch on the iPhone 14 Pro display useful, it was largely mocked by Android fans, but I instantly fell in love with Apple’s animation work. Apple’s attention to detail with animations plays a big part in making iOS feel silky smooth to use, and now the new iOS 18 animation for Siri is giving me Dynamic Island vibes.

After debuting The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, a game where Princess Zelda finally gets to save Link, Nintendo teased an upcoming Switch Lite with a swanky gold finish.

The back of the console features the Hylian crest, and when released on September 26th, it will include a 12-month Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership.

Ubisoft knows how to delay a game! Not only have we been waiting 15 years for BG&E2, we’ve also quietly snuck past the promised release window for Beyond Good and Evil: 20th Anniversary Edition. But the latter is close! The game’s trophies have leaked, and now this:

Riding a valuation pumped up by generative AI and its chips that power many of the tools, Nvidia’s market cap has passed not only Apple but now Microsoft, too, at more than $3.3 trillion, as reported by Bloomberg.

The markets are still open, but the rise has been fast — Nvidia shares are up 160 percent in 2024, passing $2 trillion in February.

Lewis, the Post’s publisher and a former Murdoch henchman, forced out Sally Buzbee, the executive editor. As a result, a longstanding UK scandal around journalistic ethics resurfaced, as Lewis has allegedly attempted to suppress stories about it.

There’s now enough blood in the water that Bezos, WaPo’s owner, is involved. He’s supporting his British import.

Bloomberg has a big report on X’s efforts to let you make payments through the app, including that it has made agreements with payment processors like Stripe.

Bloomberg also found not-great financials from 2023:

[Documents] show that X generated $1.48 billion in revenue in the first six months of 2023, down almost 40% from the same period in 2022, before Musk bought the company.

If you want the TL;DR, read Kurt Wagner’s Threads thread.

In a statement published yesterday, Stanford University denied it was shuttering the prominent research center studying abuse and disinformation online. In recent months, key staff have departed and others have been told to look for new jobs.

The Internet Observatory is, however, looking for money: Stanford says “founding grants will soon be exhausted” as the center moves under new leadership.

Regulators accepted measures Apple proposed earlier this year, including letting third-party developers access Apple’s NFC technology without using Apple Pay or Apple Wallet, three people familiar with the agreement told the Financial Times.

The final details are still being negotiated, but a settlement is expected in the next few weeks. The settlement will be in place for a decade.

Paradox Tectonic, which employs 24 people, has been working on the game since 2019, but the studio is being shut down following the life sim’s cancelation, according to Paradox Interactive.

I asked if all Tectonic employees are being laid off and if any staffers will be offered other positions at Paradox, but spokesperson Jesse Henning declined to comment.

A deep dive by Rolling Stone tracked the deaths of children who died after taking fake drugs they bought on the app. Parents and law enforcement officials blame, in part, the disappearing messages feature that made Snapchat popular in the first place.