Tech Roundup: Discord Soundboard, Google Chrome WebGPU & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]
  • The Indian government amends its IT law to ban social media platforms from hosting "misleading" content about the government and requiring that they use its fact-check unit.
  • Google announces new policy that requires Android app developers to provide an easily discoverable option to delete their accounts both from the app and online. (The changes brought by the new policy will begin to reflect in application listings in Google Play early next year.)
  • Microsoft extends its Copilot features to OneNote to help "draft plans, generate ideas, create lists, organize information, and more"; brings Bing chatbot to SwiftKey on Android. (It's likely that that the iOS app, which was discontinued for a short time last year before it returned to the App Store, will gain the same integration pretty soon.)
  • The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirms it's assessing Amazon's proposed acquisition of robot vacuum maker iRobot.
  • Twitter begins rolling out new features to Blue subscribers that offer improved visibility in search and lesser ads; officially shuts off its free API, breaking several apps like WordPress, Flipboard and Substack.
  • Expedia becomes the latest service to gain ChatGPT integration to "get recommendations on places to go, where to stay, how to get around, and what to see and do."
  • Samsung limits employees' access to OpenAI's ChatGPT after some of them were caught sharing confidential source code and meeting transcripts.
  • Every Mac running macOS Mojave or newer (since 2018) has been found to have a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin whitepaper within a system app called VirtualScanner.app.
  • Google to enable WebGPU by default with Chrome 113, offering "significant benefits such as greatly reduced JavaScript workload for the same graphics and more than three times improvements in machine learning model inferences."
  • Microsoft integrates DALL-E-powered AI image generator into its Edge browser; adds new "Drop" feature to share files across devices as well as the ability to edit and save web images without additional tools.
  • Discord introduces Super Reactions and Soundboard as a way to "react in Voice channels with sounds curated by your community."

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