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Sling TV president replaced as subscriber numbers continue to drop

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Sling TV President Warren Schlichting has left the company, and its parent corporation Dish has named his replacement. Going forward, the over-the-top television service will be headed by Michael Schwimmer who rejoined Dish in June 2019 to lead the International Business Development and Strategy group. Schlichting’s exit comes after Sling TV reported massive subscriber decline over the past two quarters.

The service lost 94,000 accounts in the fourth quarter of 2019, which is its first-ever subscription decline, according to Variety. It then lost an additional 281,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2020. By the time the end of March came around, its customer numbers were down by 4.7 percent year-over-year.

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‘Valorant’ 1.0 launch adds a new character, game mode and map

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Valorant 1.0 Patch Notes

Riot Games

A new Spike Rush game mode is available in beta, with the intention of offering a more hectic, faster match. A brand new map is available, Ascent, that features a central area teams can control to open up different routes for attackers.

Reyna is the first new character Riot’s adding to the game. She’s described as a “big “get frags” agent” who needs to get kills to power up her special abilities. According to one designer “If she doesn’t get kills, though, she’s BAD. Like, near-useless. You’re making a big bet picking Reyna.”

Existing heroes Sage, Omen, Phoenix, Raze and Jett have all had their abilities adjusted as well, hit registration has been updated and performance fixes should help keep framerates steady. Riot has also published a “community code” ahead of launch to lay out how they expect players to treat each other — it will pop up the first time new players log in. For those who break it, they can expect a 72-hour restriction that blocks “all” and “team” chat channels, although party chat will still let them communicate with friends.



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Researchers say Oura rings can predict COVID-19 symptoms three days early

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While the platform could be better than nothing, a 90 percent accuracy rate still leaves room for asymptomatic individuals to slip through the cracks. If 1,000 people use the system, 100 people may still get inaccurate results. So while this shows promise and it could indicate the kinds of solutions we’ll have in the future, it may take some time before something like this is ready for real-world use.

“We feel this platform will be integral to protecting our healthcare workers, first responders and communities as we adjust to life in the COVID-19 era,” said Ali Rezai, RNI executive chair.

The platform is currently being tested by more than 600 healthcare professionals and first responders, and RNI is working with partners like Thomas Jefferson University and Vanderbilt University to scale the test to include more than 10,000 participants. 

The study isn’t the only attempt to use the rings to predict COVID-19 infections. Researchers from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) are also exploring how Oura Ring might be used to detect the virus in emergency medical workers.

“We are hopeful that Oura’s technology will advance how people identify and understand our body’s most nuanced physiological signals and warning signs, as they relate to infectious diseases like COVID-19,” Oura Health CEO Harpreet Rai said in a statement.

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Bungie will reveal the ominous future of ‘Destiny 2’ on June 9th

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It’s about that time of the year when Bungie reveals the next major Destiny 2 update, and it’s clear that there are big updates in store. The studio has posted a private Instagram video that teases a reveal for the “next chapter” of Destiny 2 on June 9th at 12PM Eastern. There’s only a brief clip accompanying the news, but it already speaks volumes about what you can expect in year four of the shared-world shooter. Caution: there are some spoilers ahead if you haven’t played much of D2 and its Shadowkeep expansion.

The teaser shows Eris Morn, an ally and frequent doomsayer, searching in harsh weather on what looks to be Jupiter’s moon Europa. Morn is obsessed with the encroaching forces of the Darkness (looming ever since the first Destiny), and your adventures in Shadowkeep eventually took you and Eris inside a pyramid on the Moon that resembles the ominous Darkness ships teased at the end of D2’s original storyline. The Darkness is coming, and Eris may play a key role in dealing with it.



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Instagram blames anti-spam tech for stopping some Black Lives Matter posts

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According to the company, the issue arose due to the influx of posts using #blacklivesmatter, which triggered a spam prevention tool for “some people.”

“We’re aware that some people are incorrectly running into ‘action blocked’ messages when using the hashtag #blacklivesmatter, or resharing related posts,” Instagram said in a statement posted to Twitter. “We have technology that detects rapidly increasing activity on Instagram to help combat spam. Given the increase in content shared to #blacklivesmatter, this technology is incorrectly coming into effect. We are resolving this issue as quickly as we can, and investigating a separate issue uploading Stories.”

The company didn’t say how long it’s been dealing with the issue or how many users have been affected, but said it was not trying to silence the hashtag. “We want to be clear that using #blacklivesmatter is supported and celebrated on Instagram, and we are moving quickly to ensure voices using this hashtag are heard,” Instagram wrote. 

The company also said it’s working on a fix for an issue related to Story uploads, though it wasn’t clear if that was also related to the hashtag. 

Instagram’s spam detection system, which is meant to look for bots and other “inauthentic behavior,” has been mistakenly triggered by users in the past resulting in “action blocked” messages. But the fact that it’s now appearing as result of posts associated with #blacklivesmatter will likely fuel more criticism of the company.

Facebook is currently grappling with an employee backlash over its decision not to moderate Donald Trump’s posts that were described as glorifying violence by Twitter. Some Facebook workers have participated in a virtual “walkout” while others are publicly criticizing Mark Zuckerberg. 



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Italy’s ‘Immuni’ COVID-19 contact tracing app uses Google, Apple tech

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The exposure notification app uses Bluetooth to swap codes between mobile devices. If someone tests positive for COVID-19 and they mark that status on Immuni, it will alert people who have been in close proximity with that person. They’ll be advised to self-isolate and get tested for the virus themselves to limit the spread of COVID-19. 

Concerns have been raised that the app will violate people’s privacy. However, the Italian government says the app doesn’t collect personal or geolocation data. Data stored on smartphones is encrypted, as are connections between the app and the server. All app-related data, whether on people’s own devices or servers, must be deleted when it’s no longer needed, or by the end of the year at the latest. 

Although Immuni isn’t mandatory, the more people who use it, the more effective it will be, the government said. However, a survey conducted late last month suggested that just 44 percent of Italians will or probably will download the app.

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Apple releases iOS 13.5.1 to fix the flaw behind a well-known jailbreak

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Less than two weeks after Apple released iOS 13.5, the company is rolling out the first major update, iOS 13.5.1 and iPadOS 13.5.1. The update patches the vulnerability that enabled the high-profile jailbreak discovered by the Unc0ver team just days after the new OS arrived. “This update provides important security updates and is recommended for all users,” Apple wrote in its release notes.

The exploit, shared last week, works with every iPhone that runs iOS 11 or newer, including iOS 13.5. The jailbreak’s lead developer Pwn20wnd told Wired that the jailbreak “adds exceptions to the existing [security] rules.” While some users like the freedom that jailbreaking devices gives them, the practice opens those devices to new risks, and the flaw could have been used for malicious purposes.

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Amazon now allows ‘Drop In’ calls for all of your Alexa devices at once

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Amazon Alexa users can now use the “Drop In” feature to talk with all of their Echo devices at once, Amazon announced on its blog. Previously, Drop In messages could only be sent to one other Alexa-enabled device at a time — a user with an Alexa device in the bedroom could “drop in” on a device in the kitchen and have a two-way conversation.

Now, you can use a device to send a message to all Echo devices in the house at once. This could be helpful with asking group questions like, “Does anyone want anything from the grocery store?” according to the Amazon blog. To start a group Drop In conversation, you can ask Alexa to “Drop In everywhere.”

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Book publishers sue Internet Archive for allegedly enabling piracy

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The plaintiffs argue that the IA has no legal rights to distribute the books, which it scans and uploads to its servers, via Open Library or the National Emergency Library. The plaintiffs go as far as charging the Archive with piracy. The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the IA is committing copyright infringement, injunctions to stop the IA from sharing copyrighted work and statutory damages, which could be as much as $150,000 per infringement, TorrentFreak explains. 

“As a library, the Internet Archive acquires books and lends them, as libraries have always done. This supports publishing and authors and readers. Publishers suing libraries for lending books, in this case, protected digitized versions, and while schools and libraries are closed, is not in anyone’s interest. We hope this can be resolved quickly,” IA founder Brewster Kahle said in a statement provided to Engadget.

A nonprofit, the IA clearly isn’t meant for piracy. In addition to creating the Open Library, it has attempted to archive everything Trump says on video in order to help fact checkers, fixed nine million broken Wikipedia links, saved Google+ posts and started a historical web collection to power services like the Wayback Machine. There’s no guarantee that this lawsuit will succeed, but if the IA is slapped with statutory damages it could be a fatal blow to the organization.

Update 06/01/2020 5:10PM ET: This story was updated to include a statement from Internet Archive.

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Sony delays PlayStation 5 stream due to ongoing protests

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Sony has delayed its upcoming PlayStation 5 livestream, which would have seen the company show off gameplay from its upcoming next-generation console. The stream was originally scheduled to start at 4PM ET on June 4th. The company did not say when it plans to air the rescheduled event.

The decision comes in light of the anti-racism protests across the US. “While we understand gamers worldwide are excited to see PS5 games, we do not feel that right now is a time for celebration and for now, we want to stand back and allow more important voices to be heard,” the company said. The protests were sparked by the death one week ago of 46-year-old George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Earlier in the day, Sony also shared a statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. “We denounce system racism and violence against the Black community,” the company said.



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