Tech Roundup: Alexa Earbuds, Scribd Originals & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• The European Commission, E.U.'s antitrust watchdog, comes down heavily on Valve's Steam, a popular online portal for PC games, and game publishers (Bandai Namco, Capcom, Focus Home, Koch Media, and ZeniMax) for geo-locking activation keys for games sold in Eastern Europe (Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania) effectively preventing users of wealthier E.U. nations like the U.K. and Germany from buying and playing games in other E.U. member countries that have cheaper pricing; says these "business practices ultimately denied European consumers the benefits of the EU's Digital Single Market to shop around for the most attractive offer."
• Facebook sparks fresh privacy outcry after third-party apps Cultura Colectiva and At The Pool (now defunct) are found to have collected personal data of as many as 540 million users, including their comments, likes, reactions, and account names, and sensitive information of more than 20,000 users (only in the case of At The Pool), such as friends lists, interests, photos, group memberships and check-ins, and stored the sensitive information in an Amazon S3 cloud storage server without securing it with a password, allowing anyone to access the data; says it worked with Amazon to take down the public databases once it was alerted to the issue.
• Singapore proposes new "Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill" to address misinformation; law to allow the government to force "corrections" to be added to online content that is deemed to be "false," with the infringing articles updated to include the "facts" as opposed to editing them so that "the facts can travel together with the falsehood."
• WhatsApp launches a fact-checking service in India ahead of elections later this month; allows users to forward messages to a Checkpoint Tipline, where a team lead by local startup Proto will asses and mark them as either "true," "false," "misleading," or "disputed"; comes weeks after the messaging platform added capabilities to reverse search for images to help curb hoaxes and rumours from spreading.
• Social video sharing app TikTok comes under fire for failing to remove sexually explicit messages on its platform, a BBC Trending investigation finds; says "child protection is an 'industry wide-challenge' and that promoting a 'safe and positive app environment' remains the company's top priority."
• Amazon quietly stops favouring its own private label brands on its online storefront after its dual role of running a marketplace and selling its own products in it has regulators watching it closely for antitrust behaviour; significantly scales down and relocates promotions of its private label products in search results, according to CNBC.
• Google brings ads to Google Assistant for select questions (e.g. nearby hotels), celebrates 15 years of Gmail by adding new email scheduling features to allow users schedule an email to be sent a specific date and time (goodbye Boomerang!); officially shuts down its failed social network Google+ for personal users after a data breach last year unintentionally exposed users' private information to third parties.
• Researchers at GPU and chip maker Nvidia develop a new deep learning model that can transform basic digital sketches into realistic scenery.
• Online rental service provider Airbnb invests US$ 150M-US$ 200M in OYO, an Indian startup that manages budget hotels and offers hospitality services, as it continues to ramp up its offerings in the country; comes close on the heels of its acquisition of last-minute hotel booking platform HotelTonight last month.
• Apple slashes price of Apple Music subscription from INR 120 to INR 99 in India weeks after Spotify and YouTube Music make their India debut and amid reports that Apple Music has crossed Spotify in terms of paid subscribers in the U.S.; drops price of iPhone XR in India from INR 76,900 (64GB)/ INR 81,900 (128GB)/ INR 91,900 (256GB) to INR 59,900/ INR 64,900/ INR 74,900. (If Apple is really serious about penetrating Indian market, it should seriously start considering bundling a free Apple Music/ iCloud subscription along with an iPhone purchase.)
• Apple slashes prices of its iPhones, iPads, Macs and AirPods by 6 percent in China, after a tax change in the country lowered value added tax (VAT) for foreign companies selling their products in China; cuts also come after Apple quietly blamed lower than anticipated iPhone sales in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong for its revenue shortfall for the quarter ending December 2018.
• Facebook announces a new "Why am I seeing this post?" feature that allows users check why a specific post is appearing on their News Feeds and personalise them further.
• Apple begins assembling iPhone 7 models in India (Taiwanese company Wistron was already assembling iPhone 6s at its unit in Bengaluru); Apple Music app for Android reportedly to gain Chromecast support as Apple continues to play nice with rivals as Service business gains momentum.
• Google-owned YouTube ignored its employees' pleas to address and take down toxic videos in a bid to boost user engagement, reports Bloomberg; employees' proposals to curb the spread of videos that contained disturbing, extremist content, and / or conspiracy theories went unheeded by the leadership, the report adds.
• Online reading platform Scribd ventures into exclusive original content (called Scribd Originals) with the release of "Mueller's War," a book by journalist Garrett Graff looking at the prosecutor's time as a marine in the Vietnam War.
• Over 200,000 iPhone, iPad, and Mac users sign up for an Apple News+ subscription following the service's March 25 launch, reports The New York Times, citing "two people with knowledge of the figures who asked not to be named to discuss confidential information."
• Apple unveils new Powerbeats Pro Wireless Earphones for US$ 250 that comes wire-free and with a charging case (like the AirPods), but feature up to nine hours of listening time; lowers price of HomePod smart speaker to US$ 349 to US$ 299.
• Facebook reportedly partnered with The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, to run positive, laudatory "sponsored" stories about itself, reports Business Insider.
• WhatsApp Business, the chat platform's enterprise version that lets small business directly engage with customers, begins its worldwide rollout for iOS. (WhatsApp Business for Android has been available since last year.)
• Amazon confirms its plans to launch 3,236 low Earth orbit satellites in order to provide high-speed, low-latency broadband service around the globe.
• Snapchat debuts Snap Games, an ad-supported real-time multiplayer game platform on the chat service; announces new Story Kit APIs that allow third-party app developers to integrate Snap Stories into their apps.
• Amazon reportedly working on Alexa earbuds to compete with Apple AirPods and other wireless headphones, according to Bloomberg.
• South Korean chaebol Samsung forecasts 60 percent decline profits due to flagging smartphone sales and falling demand for memory chips and OLED/LCD displays.
• Spark, Readdle's popular free inbox-zero email client for iOS/macOS, comes to Android; promises not to track its users as Google shutters its variant Inbox.
• Microsoft stops selling eBooks in its Microsoft Store for Windows PCs; previously purchased eBooks (including free ones) to be removed from users' libraries in early July, and to offer refunds for any purchases made. (Who in their right minds would purchase an eBook from Microsoft when Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks and Google Play Books are the most easy choices for customers?)