Tech Roundup: Chrome OS Flex, Facebook Feed & More

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

• The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) fines Apple an additional five million euros for failing to satisfy the requirements it set regarding alternative payment systems for dating apps, taking the total fines to 20 million euros; says Apple's requirement that dating app providers must submit a separate app binary in the Netherlands if they wish to offer alternative payment systems is unreasonable and disadvantageous.
• Meta pays US$ 1.50 to its workers to moderate violent and disturbing content in an outsourced facility in Kenya, a new investigation by Time reveals, with one current employee of Sama noting that "the work that we do is a kind of mental torture."
• Meta renames "News Feed" to just "Feed" after more than 15 years in yet another sign the company is trying to shift the perception of its core products; says the change is meant "to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds."
• Intel forms a Custom Compute Group to build blockchain hardware and plans to ship cryptocurrency mining chips in 2022.
• Google clears a major regulatory hurdle after the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) accepts the company's plan to phase out and replace third-party cookies with its Privacy Sandbox proposals; watchdog urges Google to "engage in a more transparent process than initially proposed, including engagement with third parties and publishing test results."
• India to ban an additional 50 apps — including Tencent's Xriver and NetEase's Onmyoji Arena, Sweet Selfie HD, Beauty Camera, Viva Video Editor, AppLock and Dual Space Lite — with links to China, the latest in a series of similar moves over the past one and half years on ground of national security.
• Samsung adopts Google Messages as its default messaging app in the U.S., starting with the Galaxy S22 series, in what's a major push for RCS, which supports typing indicators, read receipts, and the ability to share higher resolution photos and larger files.

• Meta's Instagram rolls out new Private Story Likes feature that allows users to like Stories without having to send a DM; agrees to pay US$ 90 million to settle a 2012 lawsuit accusing the company of tracking users even after they logged out of their accounts.
• Web browser company Opera partners with Yat to enable emoji-only based web addresses "to bring a new level of creativity to the internet."
• Snapchat tests mid-roll ads that appear in the Stories of a small group of U.S. creators, with a wider rollout happening in the coming months.
• Akamai is buying infrastructure-as-a-service provider Linode, which positions itself as an alternative to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, in a deal worth US$ 900 million.
• Twitter expands a beta test of Safety Mode, which temporarily blocks accounts using harmful language in replies, to 50% of users in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.
• Google announces a new version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex, which is designed to run on old PCs and Macs.
• ViacomCBS, the company created through the merger of CBS and Viacom in 2019, rebrands to Paramount, as its streaming service Paramount+ (formerly known as CBS All Access) hits 32.8 million subscribers during the last quarter of 2021, putting it ahead of Peacock (9 million), ESPN+ (17 million), and Discovery+ (20 million).
• Google rolls out new updates to Docs to take on Notion, including a pageless Smart Canvas format, AI-powered summaries, and Maps embedded previews; brings Search chips to Google Drive to help users narrow down search results using different filters.
• Microsoft rolls out the Amazon Appstore Preview, offering over 1,000 Android apps, in the Microsoft Store, alongside other tweaks to Windows 11, including Taskbar improvements and redesigned Media Player and Notepad apps.
• Intel to acquire Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli chipmaking company that focuses on specialty products like radio frequency (RF) chips, CMOS image sensors, and power management parts, for US$ 5.4 billion.