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Testing sidelined as health departments focus on vaccination

Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles was the biggest COVID-19 testing site in the United States, with the ability to test over 10,000 people each day. But two weeks into January, amid a chaotic and slow-moving COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the city shut down the site in order to convert it into a vaccination site. The city… Read more

Facebook’s News tab comes to UK in first launch outside of the US

Facebook’s News tab will go live in the UK on January 26th in its first launch outside the US. The company says the section will offer a mix of curated and personalized news stories, but for select publishers the bigger news is that it will see Facebook paying them to license their content. Although Facebook… Read more

Amnesty International calls for a ban on facial recognition in New York City

Amnesty International has launched a new campaign against facial recognition titled Ban The Scan — and is launching with a demand for New York City to halt police and government use of the technology. Amnesty argues facial recognition is incompatible with basic privacy rights, and will exacerbate structural racism in policing tactics. “New Yorkers should… Read more

Q Acoustics Q Active 200

Our Verdict Q Acoustics bravely enters uncharted waters, but out-of-character sonic shortfalls let down an otherwise decent first effort For Thoughtfully designed Vast hub connectivity Punchy, room-filling sound Against Lacks dynamic and rhythmic expression No dedicated control app Stands are expensive extras It’s a simple fact of life that the more there is to do,… Read more

Radio and TV host Larry King dies at 87

Longtime TV and radio host Larry King died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 87. Ora Media, which King co-founded in 2012, confirmed the news in a tweet to the @KingsThings Twitter account. A cause of death was not immediately available Saturday, but he had reportedly been hospitalized recently with COVID-19…. Read more

Garmin Edge 830 cycling computer review: Hitting the data sweet spot

(Pocket-lint) – Ask any cyclist what the first thing you should update on a bike is and they will invariably say the wheels. While that’s likely to give you the biggest performance upgrades, it’s hard to quantify that without the humblest of bicycle accessories, the bike computer. Being of techy mind and body, we’d say… Read more

Ultra-affordable Realme C20 is official with Helio G35, big 5,000 mAh battery

Realme has introduced a new phone from its affordable C lineup, and the first market to see the phone is Vietnam. The Realme C20 comes with a Helio G35 chipset, a big battery and a single camera on the back. The C20 comes with a 6.5” LCD of HD+ resolution, which is a usual affair… Read more

Fireworks ban: should the calm, dust-free New Year's turn stay?

On New Year’s Day 2021 Berlin offered an unusual picture for residents who have been living in the capital for some time. In many neighborhoods – with the exception of problem areas – the streets were as clean as they were leaky. The tons of fireworks and firecrackers rubbish that the city cleaning department usually… Read more

Nida-Rümelin: Germans accept location with the Corona warning app

The Munich philosopher Julian Nida-Rümelin has underpinned his appeal to collect user location data via the Corona Warning App (CWA). Such tracking on smartphones would be the easiest way to be able to trace infection chains more easily in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, he said on Thursday in an online debate in the… Read more

How Brexit will affect data protection

It was a kind of Christmas miracle, the agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, which took place on 24. December 2020 and thus a few days before the deadline on 31. December was closed. The trade agreement made it possible to avoid the hard Brexit at the last minute. The contract concerns… Read more

IT security: Berlin transport companies want to be unimportant

The Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) are in a clinch with the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). It is disputed whether the BVG is a critical infrastructure (Kritis) for local passenger transport within the meaning of the BSI and IT Security Act. If so, reporting and certification requirements apply. In addition, the public company would have… Read more

Google threatens to remove its search engine from Australia if new law goes into effect

Google is threatening to pull its search engine from an entire country — Australia — if a proposed law goes into effect that would force Google to pay news publishers for their content. “If this version of the Code were to become law it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google… Read more

Samsung Galaxy S21 5G review

Introduction Unpacking 2021 with a bang, we have the Samsung Galaxy S21 for you today. Samsung has rearranged its yearly release schedule to pull its high-end S-series reveal for January, and could there be a better way to kick off the year? We did say ‘bang’, but it’s hardly the most thunderous of those –… Read more

Instacart is firing every employee who voted to unionize

Instacart is laying off every employee who voted to unionize, Motherboard reports. The news comes as the company shuts down in-store operations at some grocery stores amid the coronavirus pandemic and doubles down on curbside pickups. The layoffs impact 10 unionized workers at a grocery store called Mariano’s, in addition to other Instacart employees. The… Read more

heise + | Build a bat scanner with a MEMS microphone

Bats communicate and orientate themselves outside of our hearing range. With a MEMS microphone you can quickly track down the night owls. As I sat on the terrace on long and warm summer evenings, I noticed that there was a lot of bat flying in our garden at dusk. This is probably the best hunting… Read more