Tech Roundup: Imgur Emerald, Uber Pass & More

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

• The Indian government announces National Digital Health Mission for digitising citizens' health records that aims to tie every individual's medical history through a single ID residing in a common database that will be linked to health facilities across the country.
• India's antitrust watchdog, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), dismisses complaint against Facebook's WhatsApp, saying the company has not abused its dominant position to expand in the country's digital payments market; says the company's "actual conduct is yet to manifest in the market" as Facebook awaits India's Supreme Court approval to launch WhatsApp Pay in the country.
• The U.S. government announces more restrictions against China's Huawei with an aim to limit access to commercially available chips; to prohibit the company from sourcing chips made by foreign firms that have been developed or produced with U.S. software or technology.
• Germany's antitrust authority, the Federal Cartel Office, launches an investigation into Amazon's influence over third-party traders selling on its platform; alleges the retail giant is using "unknown mechanisms" to regulate retailers' pricing on the marketplace.
• Google writes an open letter to its Australian users that the government's proposal to make it pay for news content, called News Media Bargaining Code, would put user privacy at risk, threaten free Search and YouTube results; Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) accuses the search giant of publishing "misinformation," adding "Google will not be required to share any additional user data."
• IBM-owned Weather Channel app agrees to change how it informs users about location-tracking practices and sale of personal data as part of a 2019 lawsuit settlement that alleged users of the app were misled when they agreed to share their location information in exchange for personalised forecasts and alerts by selling their data to third parties without explicit consent.
• Apple expands its independent repair shop program — which it began in response to criticism from right-to-repair groups by offering to sell parts and providing free training courses to independent shops to perform out-of-warranty work — to Macs, an year after it debuted the program for iPhones.
• Chinese telecom giant ZTE unveils plans to launch Axon 20 5G, the world's first smartphone with under-display camera, next month on September 1.
• Adobe releases an update to Lightroom's iOS app after a previous version of the app ends up permanently deleting users' photos and presets; says "photos and presets that were not synced to the Lightroom cloud" are nor recoverable.
• Facebook takes down 790 Groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy movement, restricting the reach of another 1,950 Groups, 440 Pages, and over 10,000 Instagram accounts in a bid to tackle "organisations and movements that have demonstrated significant risks to public safety."

• ByteDance-owned TikTok says it's removed 380,000 videos and 64,000 comments, and banned over 1,300 users, in the U.S. since the beginning of the year for breaking hate speech rules; Reddit bans nearly 7,000 subreddits for hateful content since rolling out its new content policies on June 29, resulting in an 18 percent drop in users posting hate speech.
• Apple becomes the first U.S. public company to eclipse US$ 2 trillion in market value (just two years after Apple first reached a market capitalisation of US$ 1 trillion) as its pivot to services pays off and tech companies benefit from consumers' increasing reliance on technology in the wake of the pandemic.
• Amazon.com has led the way with a 71% advance, followed by Apple, which is up 51%. Microsoft has risen 35%, Facebook is up 31% and Google's parent Alphabet has climbed 12%.
• Image-hosting platform Imgur partners with Coil to launch Emerald, a US$ 5 per month ad-free subscription service with new community features, like profile flair and the ability to mute tags across the site. (Coil is a lot like Scroll and Patreon, a micropayments service where for a monthly sum, users can support content creators and experience web monetised content.)
• Microsoft to end support for Internet Explorer 11 across its Microsoft 365 apps and services on August 17, 2021; to also also drop support for its existing legacy version of Microsoft Edge on March 9, 2021.
• Popular video conferencing service Zoom to support for Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal, and Google Nest Hub Max later this year; Facebook to bring native support for Zoom, Webex, BlueJeans, and GoToMeeting to Portal devices starting next month.
• Apple acquires Israeli AR and computer vision startup Camerai in a deal worth several tens of millions of dollars, continuing the trend of quietly snapping up small tech startups in recent years.
• Uber expands Pass — an Amazon Prime-style subscription service for US$ 24.99 a month that allows Uber customers to pay a monthly fee for discounted rates for Uber rides, Uber Eats deliveries, and scooter and bike trips — across the U.S. except California.
• The exception is not surprising given the company's escalating spat with local authorities over how it classifies drivers as independent contractors following the passage of Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), a new California state law that requires a company to classify gig workers as employees.
• Samsung's current and upcoming top tier Galaxy smartphones and tablets, including the Galaxy S10, S20, Note10, Note20, Galaxy Fold, Z Fold2, Galaxy A51, A71, and Galaxy Tab S6 and S7, to receive three generations of Android OS upgrades; cautions "availability of Android OS upgrades and features may vary by device and market [and] upgrade schedule will depend on factors including but not limited to complexity of the update, model, as well as market penetration and more."
• Facebook-owned Instagram deprecates Nametags feature in favour of QR codes to easily look up a business or user's profile; rolls out new "suggested posts" at the end of users' Instagram feeds with an aim to offer related posts, including ads, tailored to users' preferences unlike Explore feed's adjacent content. (Say hello to the bottomless scroll!)

The new "Suggested Posts" feature in Instagram

• Facebook to mandate users of its Oculus VR headset to sign up with a Facebook account, removing support for separate Oculus accounts starting in October.
• This tighter brand integration has been coming for some time now. Last September, the Oculus platform added social features powered by Facebook, and in December, it began requiring a Facebook account to unlock certain features like concerts in Venues and to leverage Oculus VR Data to target users with personalised ads.
• But it also comes with its perks: using one account makes it easy for Facebook to monitor bad actors across its family of apps, a direction the company has been increasingly moving towards in recent years as it attempts to become the identity layer for the internet like Google and Apple.
• China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) picks Gitee, a company that claims to have hosted more than 10 million open-source repositories from the developer community, to build an alternative to GitHub, as the technological decoupling between the U.S. and China benefits homegrown firms. (Last December, Microsoft's GitHub said it's "keen" to open a subsidiary in China.)
• Google adds Chromecast support for Meet videoconferencing service; updates search with improved activity cards for surfacing past job searches, recipes, and online shopping.
• Samsung launches its Pay Card, a digital Mastercard debit card powered by London-based Curve, in the U.K., allowing users to consolidate their existing bank cards and digital wallet.
• Snap begins testing a new feature that would allow users to share Snapchat content, like original shows and content from its Discover partners, outside of the platform.
• Nvidia's cloud gaming service GeForce Now becomes available on Chromebooks in beta; requires that users need a minimum 15 Mbps internet connection to avoid lag, with no option to automatically adjust resolution quality for poor network conditions.
• Taiwan to ban Chinese streaming giants iQiyi and Tencent WeTV from September 3, joining India and the U.S. in placing strict restrictions on Chinese tech companies amid heightened geopolitical tensions; prohibits Taiwanese individuals and organisations from working with the companies, adding the companies set up operations in Taiwan through "illegal" partnerships through their Hong Kong subsidiaries despite a April ruling that banned Chinese OTT firms from operating in the territory.
• Short-term home rental company Airbnb confidentially files to go public; comes at a time home-rental business has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced millions of people to postpone their travel plans.