Tech Roundup: Facebook Ego4D, Russia Face Pay & More

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

• Russia introduces Face Pay in its metro system, which the country says is the world's first mass-scale facial recognition payment system, across 240 stations; requires metro riders to upload a photo and connect their bank and metro cards to the Mosmetro mobile app.
• Social audio app Clubhouse adds a new Music Mode that allows users to host and listen to live music shows, ahead of of Amazon's reported entry into that space, and as Twitter begins widely rolling out "ticketed spaces."
• Online payment solutions provider Square is considering building an open source Bitcoin miner, using custom silicon, for individuals and businesses, pushing the value of Bitcoin past US$ 62,000.
• Facebook-owned WhatsApp officially launches end-to-end encryption for chat history backups in iCloud and Google Drive; details Ego4D, an AI research project in partnership with 13 universities to improve egocentric perception — the ability for AI to understand and interact with the world from a first-person perspective — with potential to improve AI assistants.
• Microsoft to shutter its professional social network LinkedIn in China over 'a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements' in the country; to replace it with a standalone job board app called InJobs sans "a social feed or the ability to share posts or articles."

• Google mobile search results get 'continuous scrolling' treatment as part of a broader redesign that went into effect at the start of the year.
• Apple takes down Quran Majeed, a popular app for reading and listening to the Quran, in China after a request from officials, who say it hosts illegal religious texts; faces criticism from South Korean antitrust regulator, the Korea Communications Commission, for its refusal change its app store policy and open the platform to allow alternate payment methods following a new law that went into effect last month.
• Video game publisher and digital distribution company Valve updates Steam's rules to ban games "built on blockchain technology that issue or allow exchange of cryptocurrencies or NFTs."
• Apple's privacy changes create a windfall for its own advertising business; new analysis shows that Apple Search Ads now account for 58% of iOS app installs from an ad click, up from 17% a year ago, with the tech giant poised to earn US$ 5 billion from its ads business in the fiscal year 2021.
• New investigation from The Markup reveals that retail behemoth Amazon places its own brands above competitors, even those with higher ratings and more sales, in violaton of antitrust regulations.