Tech Roundup: Google Pixel 4, Flipkart Farmermart & More

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

1. Lebanon withdraws plans to levy ~US$ 6 per month tax on calls via WhatsApp and other VoIP apps as part of measures to raise revenues for the state after public uproar.
2. China's largest video platform Tencent Video, which as over 97 million paying subscribers, partners with London-based ad platform Mirriad to integrate branded content directly into entertainment programming without interrupting the viewer experience.
3. Britain's competition regulator The Competition and Markets Authority begins investigation into whether Amazon's US$ 575 million investment in food delivery service Deliveroo could result in a "substantial lessening of competition" within the U.K.
4. Privacy-focused Brave browser says it has 8 million monthly active users, with daily active users, on the other hand, surpassing the 2.8 million mark.
5. The U.K. scraps controversial plan to require age verification for accessing porn online, after repeated delays; the proposed law would've forced pornography websites to age-verify UK Internet users to ensure that users are over the age of 18 before allowing access to pornographic material.
6. U.S. Securities Exchange Commission halts messaging service Telegram's US$ 1.7 billion unregistered digital token offering, stating the company had conducted an illegal sale of unregistered securities in the U.S., selling 2.9 billion digital tokens called "Grams" to 171 investors around the world, raising $1.7 billion.
7. Russian tech giant Yandex launches TikTok rival called Sloy ('layer' in Russian) that makes it easy for users to create 90-second videos with augmented reality effects and background music; also uses AI to recognise and tag clothing items in videos that can clicked to watch videos that contain similar clothes and styling.
8. Apple's hardware partner Foxconn begins producing iPhone XR handsets in India, with iPhone 11 models soon to be added to the mix, as the tech giant seeks to reduce its footprint in China in the wake of U.S.-Sino trade war.
9. Image-hosting service Imgur to no longer support communities associated with NSFW Reddit subreddits; says "over the years, these pages have put Imgur's user growth, mission, and business at risk," as it attempts to reinvent itself as a photo-sharing social network.
10. Google-parent Alphabet's drone unit Wing has officially launches the first commercial drone delivery flight in the U.S., beating out competitors Amazon and Uber.
11. Walmart officially launches InHome grocery delivery service in three cities across Missouri, Pennsylvania and Florida, allowing Walmart associates to enter customers' homes and put the groceries away while live-streaming the delivery in real-time.
12. Uber buys grocery delivery startup Cornershop, which operates in Chile, Mexico, Peru, and Canada, months after Mexico blocked Walmart's acquisition of Cornershop; lays off another batch of 350 employees across Eats, performance marketing, Advanced Technologies Group and recruiting as it attempts to cut costs. (Uber has totally let go of 1,185 people so far just this year.)
13. India's Reliance Jio unveils an AI-powered Video Call Assistant service that allows businesses to automate their customer support and other communications.
14. Reddit for iOS gains Snapchat integration; lets users share Reddit posts directly as a story or with just handful of friends.
15. Popular messaging app Kik reverses its plans to shut down the service post its acquisition by MediaLab, the owner of anonymous social network Whisper and mixtape app DatPiff; says "there's some really exciting plans for making the app even better."
16. Sudo, a superuser utility that's installed on almost all Linux flavours, gets patched after uncovering a flaw that could let users run commands as "root" even when they are restricted.
17. Walmart-owned Indian retailer Flipkart forays into video streaming with original content under Flipkart Video Originals; enters food retail with with Farmermart to take on Grofers and Bigbasket. (Flipkart has over 160 million customers in India.)
18. Amazon rolls out new option to allow Amazon Pay customers in India to use voice commands with Alexa to pay their utility, internet, mobile, and satellite cable TV bills.
19. Twitter to restrict user interactions with world leaders' tweets that violate its rules; will let users quote the tweet, but not retweet, like, reply, or share it.
20. Professional social network LinkedIn launches 'LinkedIn Events’ that enables members to create, share, and discover professional events; WeWork-owned event organising service MeetUp backtracks from its plans to charge users US$ 2 to RSVP to events organised via the platform.
21. Verizon-owned Yahoo to shut down its long-running Yahoo Groups platform on October 28; will permanently delete all posted content on December 14.
22. Popular GIF platform Giphy unveils Arcade, a new gaming service designed to let people play, create, and share mini web games as easily as they would animated GIFs.
23. Google unveils heavily-leaked 5.7" Pixel 4 and 6.3" Pixel 4XL pure-Android smartphones with Project Soli-based motion sense radar for gesture recognition, wireless Pixel Buds (coming next year in the U.S.) with Adaptive Sound to boost volume as users move into noisy environments for US$ 179, Nest Mini smart speaker with improved audio for $49, Pixelbook Go Chromebook for US$ 649, Nest Wifi speaker-cum-router for US$ 269, and a redesigned Google Assistant experience at its October hardware event.
• The new Pixel phones will no longer support full-resolution backups to Google Photos, instead it's pushing people towards buying subscriptions to Google One. They will not land in India either, after failing to secure permissions to use the frequency range (60GHz mmWave) of its gesture-sensing radar tech in the country.
• Not launching the smartphones won't really hurt the company, given the Pixel's lukewarm reception in the Indian market, especially as their prices increased over the years.
• Google has also phased out Daydream mobile VR platform and announced plans to launch Stadia cloud game streaming service on November 19 for those who spent $130 on the Founder's Edition package.
• The star of the show is clearly the new voice recorder app on the Pixel 4 that can transcribe speech in real time without an internet connection. That's bad news for the many transcription services that both charge money and take time to do this sort of thing. Plus it's offline too!
• Google, in addition, confirmed it will update the Pixel 4 "in the coming months" with an option that requires open eyes for the phone's face unlock to be successful after discovery that the phones can be unlocked even with eyes closed, potentially targeting sleeping, unconscious people.
24. Google makes it easy for users to create a new note by typing keep.new in the browser's address bar and a new calendar event by heading over to cal.new or meeting.new (similar to doc.new, docs.new or document.new for Docs, sheet.new, sheets.new or spreadsheet.new for Sheets, slide.new, slides.new, deck.new or presentation.new for Slides, form.new or forms.new for Forms, and site.new, sites.new or website.new for Sites), gives Blogger app for Android a Material Design Makeover after years of two years of stagnation, and bringing it in line with its other offerings; continues to discontinue products at an alarming rate, as it kills mobile data-saving app Datally and stops selling AI-powered automatic camera Clips two years after launch.
25. Microsoft debuts a preview of its Project xCloud cloud game streaming service for Xbox users in the U.S., U.K., and Korea, initially with four games — Gears 5, Halo 5: Guardians, Killer Instinct, and Sea of Thieves — for Android devices.
26. Facebook-owned photo-sharing social network Instagram tightens third-party access to personal information; adds a new setting that allows users to "manage all of the third-party services they connect to their Instagram account."
27. Microsoft rolls out new Tamper Protection feature for its Windows Defender Antivirus service; security feature thwarts any attempt made by cybercriminals to break the real-time anti-malware defenses incorporated in Windows.
28. India's ride-hailing giant Ola launches self-drive cab rental service "Ola Drive," allowing users to choose to book a car of their choice for as little as two hours by paying a security deposit starting at Rs. 2,000.