Tech Roundup: Apple iOS Live Captions, Uber Charter & More

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

• Ride hailing company Uber unveils a new option to book a bus or a passenger van to its existing transport roster (called "Uber Charter"), a trip itinerary feature for booking rides during an extended trip, options to order food via voice, as the company works to become a super app as a way to diversify its offering and improve profitability in the long run.
• Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that the US$ 44 billion Twitter deal "cannot move forward" until the social media platform provides data behind its estimate that there are about fewer than 5% spam accounts.
• Music streamer Spotify is testing a new profile feature that lets select artists promote their NFTs.
• Meta begins piloting a new end-to-end encryption feature for Quest's VR Messenger app, as the company continues to bring encryption support to its family of apps.
• Google unveils its free personal tier for legacy G Suite users, allowing continued access to "custom domain with Gmail, retain access to no-cost Google services such as Google Drive and Google Meet, and keep your purchases and data."
• Meta releases its latest Transparency Report for the second half of 2021; says global government requests for user data increased 2% from 211,055 to 214,777, with most requests coming from the U.S., India, Germany, France, Brazil, and the U.K., that the volume of content restrictions based on local law increased globally 8% from 47,365 in H1 2021 to 50,959 in H2 2021, and that it identified 38 disruptions of Facebook services in 12 countries.
• Apple begins implementing a new subscription feature that will allow customers to be charged automatically when an app's subscription price goes up "under certain specific conditions and with advance user notice"; notes that the "specific conditions for this feature are that the price increase doesn’t occur more than once per year, doesn’t exceed US$5 and 50% of the subscription price, or US$50 and 50% for an annual subscription price, and is permissible by local law."
• Payment processor Mastercard tests facial recognition software in Brazil, letting users who opt in pay with a smile or a wave. (The data is expected to be converted into a digital template and encrypted, while the facial images stay on the device.)
• Apple takes page out of Google's Android; to add support for live captions in iOS, iPadOS and macOS as part its new accessibility updates later this year.
• Stock trading platform Robinhood says it's working on a standalone non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that gives users control over the private keys necessary to manage their assets on the blockchain.