Facebook parent company Meta has acquired Luxexcel, a Dutch startup specializing in smart eyewear. News of the purchase was first reported by De Tijd and later confirmed by TechCrunch. “We’re excited that the Luxexcel team has joined Meta, deepening the existing partnership between the two companies,” a Meta spokesperson told the outlet. The company did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

Founded in 2009, Luxexcel began life as a prescription lens manufacturer. More recently, the company has made a name for itself in the augmented reality space. At the start of 2021, for instance, it partnered with WaveOptics, the display manufacturer Snap paid $500 million later that same year to buy. As TechCrunch points out, there are also rumors Luxexcel previously worked with Meta on the company’s Project Aria AR glasses.

The acquisition comes as Meta faces regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission over its purchase of Supernatural developer Within. The agency sued Meta in July to block the deal. The social media giant also faces criticism over just how much it's spending to further its metaverse ambitions. In October, a month before the company laid off 11,000 employees, Meta told investors Reality Labs, its virtual and augmented reality unit, lost more than $9 billion in 2022. It went on to predict the division’s operating losses were likely to “grow significantly year-over-year” in 2023.

When doctors need to confirm an Alzheimer's diagnosis, they often turn to a combination of brain imaging and cell analysis. Both have their downsides. The latter involves a lumbar puncture, an invasive and painful procedure that’s more commonly known as a spinal tap. A doctor will insert a needle into the lower back to extract a sample of the patient’s cerebrospinal fluid. A lab technician then tests the sample for signs of progressive nerve cell loss and excessive amyloid and tau protein accumulation. MRI scans are less invasive but they’re often expensive and accessibility is an issue; not every community has access to the technology.

The next best tool for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease is a blood test. While some can detect abnormal tau protein counts, they’re less effective at spotting the telltale signs of neurodegeneration. But that could soon change. This week, in the journal Brain, a multinational team made up of researchers from Sweden, Italy, the UK and US detailed a new antibody-based blood test they recently developed. The new test can detect brain-derived tau proteins, which are specific to Alzheimer’s disease. Following a study of 600 patients, the team found their test could reliably distinguish the illness from other neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Thomas Karikari, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the co-authors of the study, told The Guardian he hopes the breakthrough could help other researchers design better clinical trials for Alzheimer’s treatments. “A blood test is cheaper, safer and easier to administer, and it can improve clinical confidence in diagnosing Alzheimer’s and selecting participants for clinical trial and disease monitoring,” he said. There’s more work to be done before the test makes its way to your local hospital. To start, the team needs to validate that it works for a wide variety of patients, including those who come from different ethnic backgrounds.

Amazon’s growing library of sports content could soon have a home of its own. The Information reports the retailer is working on a new standalone streaming app to declutter Prime Video and better highlight its deals with the NFL, Premier League and New York Yankees. The development comes following recent comments from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who highlighted live sports content as one of the areas where the company plans to continue spending money even as it cuts costs in other areas.

The Information says it couldn’t learn when Amazon expects to release the app, nor if the company plans to charge separately for access to Prime Video’s sports content. The outlet also notes Amazon may decide to shelve the app. Amazon did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

Whether it makes sense for Amazon to launch a standalone sports app is not as straightforward as you might think. On the one hand, Prime Video could definitely use decluttering. Even after Amazon recently redesigned the platform’s interface to make it “less busy and overwhelming,” it can be tricky to find content on the service since it incorporates both streaming and video-on-demand content.

On the other hand, a standalone app would create more pressure for Amazon to secure worthwhile content. What’s more, the cost of sports content has increased dramatically in recent years. Amazon reportedly pays about $1 billion annually for exclusive streaming rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package. Earlier this month, Google reportedly agreed to pay between $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion for the league’s Sunday Ticket package. A standalone app with its own subscription tier would also complicate Prime Video’s role as a driver of Prime subscriptions. Amazon may decide whatever it gains by creating a separate app may not be worth the tradeoff.  

On Tuesday, workers at Proletariat, the Boston-based studio Blizzard bought earlier this year to support World of Warcraft development, announced they recently filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Proletariat is the third Activision Blizzard studio to announce a union drive in 2022, but where past campaigns at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany involved the quality assurance workers at those studios, the effort at Proletariat includes all non-management workers. The 57 workers who want to form the Proletariat Workers Alliance include animators, game designers and software engineers. The group seeks representation from the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the union that helped QA staff at Raven Software and Blizzard Albany organize.

“Everyone in the video game industry knows Activision Blizzard’s reputation for creating a hostile work environment, so earlier this year, when we heard that Blizzard was planning to acquire Proletariat, we started to discuss how we could protect the great culture we have created here,” said Dustin Yost, a software engineer at Proletariat. “By forming a union and negotiating a contract, we can make sure that we are able to continue doing our best work and create innovative experiences at the frontier of game development.”

The Proletariat Workers Alliance asked Activision Blizzard to recognize their union voluntarily. According to the group, the company has yet to respond to the request. Activision Blizzard did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request.

The workers at Proletariat say they aim to preserve the studio’s “progressive, human-first” benefits, including its flexible paid time off policy and robust healthcare options. Additionally, they want to protect the studio from crunch, the practice of forcing compulsory overtime during the development of a game. They’re asking management to commit to a no-mandatory overtime policy and implement better pay and health protections for workers who agree to voluntary overtime. The Proletariat Workers Alliance says their colleagues also shouldn’t be penalized during performance reviews for not taking on extra work.

In June, Microsoft announced it would respect all unionization efforts at Activision Blizzard following the close of its $68.7 billion deal to buy the publisher. Earlier this month, the FTC sued the tech giant to block the merger.

The Federal Trade Commission has ordered Mastercard to start providing competing payment networks with the information they need to process debit card payments. In a proposed enforcement action announced on Friday, the FTC said Mastercard had allegedly violated a provision of the Dodd-Frank act known as the Durbin Amendment by prohibiting merchants from routing transactions over alternative networks.

The action targets “tokenization,” the technology that underpins mobile payment applications like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. When you go to make a debit or credit card purchase with your phone’s mobile wallet, the software substitutes sensitive information, including the primary number associated with your account, with a separate set of single-use “tokens.” Mastercard and Visa say the practice prevents fraud since tokens contain no exploitable information when they’re in transit. It’s only when they arrive at Mastercard or Visa’s servers, and they’re mapped back to their original account holder, that they point to someone.

According to the FTC, Mastercard has historically stopped competing networks from accessing its token vault. That means whenever consumers decided to pay with a mobile wallet, merchants had to route the transactions over Mastercard (or Visa) and pay the company's transactions fees, which are typically higher than that of its competitors. The Durbin Amendment calls for banks to support two competing payment networks on all debit cards. It was a provision Congress introduced to promote competition among networks. The FTC didn’t say if it reached a similar agreement with Visa.

“While we are taking these steps to bring this matter to a close, there should be no question that tokenized transactions provide an increased level of protection to both consumers and merchants,” Mastercard spokesperson Seth Eisen told Bloomberg. “This focus on security guides our efforts in a highly competitive market and provides the incentive for us to continue investing in innovations that promote the peace of mind every person expects.” Eisen added Mastercard would “continue to work to update our processes to comply with the consent order and provide even greater choice.”

The FTC plans to collect comments from the public before voting to finalize the order against Mastercard.

Twitter says it’s working on bringing back the #ThereIsHelp banner, a feature that pointed users to suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources when searching for certain content. On Friday, Reuters reported that the company had removed the safety tool earlier in the week on orders from Elon Musk.

After the outlet published its story, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, confirmed the removal but said it was temporary. “We have been fixing and revamping our prompts. They were just temporarily removed while we do that,” she told Reuters. “We expect to have them back up next week.”

On Saturday morning, Musk denied Twitter had ever removed the feature. “The message is actually still up. This is fake news,” Musk wrote on Twitter, adding, “Twitter doesn’t prevent suicide.” When Engadget tired searching for terms like “suicide” and “COVID-19” on Saturday afternoon, the banner did not appear.

Moving forward, Irwin told Reuters Twitter plans to adopt an approach used by Google. She said the company “does really well with these in their search results and [we] are actually mirroring some of their approach with the changes we are making.”

The disappearance of the #ThereIsHelp banner, even if it was only momentary, led to criticism of Twitter from some consumer safety advocates. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, a former member of the company’s recently dissolved Trust and Safety council, told Reuters she found the event “extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing.” Rahman also pointed out companies typically work on safety features “in parallel,” leaving existing ones in place before replacing them.

In the US, you can reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or 800-273-8255.

Apple has stopped rolling out an optional Home app upgrade after users began reporting issues with the software. "We temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture," the company says on a support page spotted by MacRumors. "The option to upgrade will return soon. If you already upgraded, you are unaffected by this change."

Released as a part of iOS 16.2 and macOS Ventura 13.1 on December 13th, the recalled update was an upgrade to HomeKit's underlying architecture. Apple said the rewrite would make the platform "more reliable and efficient." However, some of those who installed the software quickly encountered issues, including select Siri terms not working correctly and their smart home devices not showing up within the Home app. MacRumors was one of the first publications to spot that Apple had removed the option to install the upgrade. The company later confirmed the move after The Verge contacted it.

"We are aware of an issue that may impact the ability for users to share the Home within the Home app. A fix will be available soon," an Apple spokesperson told the outlet. "In the meantime, we've temporarily removed the option to upgrade to the new Home architecture. Users who have already upgraded will not be impacted." If you've already installed the new architecture, you'll need to wait for Apple to release a fix for the software; there's no option to revert to the older framework.

Okta is responding to a major security incident for at least the second time this year. According to BleepingComputer, Okta began notifying customers earlier today of an event that saw an unnamed party steal the company’s source code. In early December, Okta was notified by GitHub of possible suspicious access to its online code repositories. Following an investigation, Okta determined someone had used that access to copy over its source code but that they had subsequently not gained unauthorized access to its identity and access management systems.

“We have confirmed no unauthorized access to the Okta service, and no unauthorized access to customer data,” writes David Bradbury, Okta’s chief security officer, in the email obtained by BleepingComputer. “Okta does not rely on the confidentiality of its source code for the security of its services.”

Okta did not immediately respond to Engadget’s comment request. In Bradbury’s email, the company promises to publish a blog post about the incident later today. As of the writing of this article, Okta has yet to do that.

While the damage from the GitHub incident appears minimal, the event is still a significant test of Okta. Following the Lapsus$ breach that saw hackers from the ransomware gang access two active customer accounts, the company admitted it “made a mistake” in handling the disclosure of that data breach. You may recall it took Okta two months to notify customers of what had happened, and one of the things it promised to do in the aftermath of the incident was “communicate more rapidly with customers.” Now that pledge is being put to the test.

After two consecutive failed attempts to re-establish contact, NASA on Wednesday officially called an end to its InSight Mars mission. On December 15th, the lander made its final transmission to Earth. NASA said it would make the tough decision to call the mission dead after two failed communication attempts earlier this year. The agency will continue to listen for a signal “just in case” but notes the odds of that occurring at this point are “considered unlikely.”

NASA shared the news of InSight’s impending demise on Monday when it posted the lander’s final selfie -- taken on April 24th, 2022 -- to Twitter. Since arriving on the martian surface in 2018, InSight has gradually accumulated dust on its solar panels. Earlier this year, NASA predicted the debris would become too thick for the lander to power itself.

“My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send,” InSight’s final tweet reads. “Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will – but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.”

NASA is being modest when it says InSight’s time on Mars was productive. For more than four years, the lander – its name short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport – collected data about the planet’s deep interior. Using a highly sensitive seismometer, InSight detected 1,319 “marsquakes,” including at least one caused by a meteoroid impact. Using that information, NASA scientists concluded the core of Mars is about half the size of Earth’s. InSight also sent back daily weather reports and gave humans our first chance to hear some of the sounds of the Red Planet.

“InSight has more than lived up to its name. As a scientist who’s spent a career studying Mars, it’s been a thrill to see what the lander has achieved, thanks to an entire team of people across the globe who helped make this mission a success,” said Laurie Leshin, the director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the unit that managed the mission. “Yes, it’s sad to say goodbye, but InSight’s legacy will live on, informing and inspiring.”

After clearing both houses of the New York State Legislature in June, Governor Kathy Hochul has finally signed the Warehouse Worker Protection Act. Broadly modeled after AB-701, the landmark labor law California enacted earlier this year, the legislation aims to protect workers from unreasonable productivity quotas. Under the law, New York State will require major warehouse companies, including Amazon, to provide new hires and current employees with documentation detailing their productivity expectations.

The law also gives workers the right to request their quota at any time, including after their employment ends. Additionally, the legislation prohibits companies from imposing quotas that interfere with a worker’s state-mandated meal and restroom breaks. Companies also cannot fire someone for failing to meet an undisclosed quota.

“Regulations protecting workers in the warehousing industry have lagged far behind its rapid growth until today,” said the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), one of the labor groups that pushed for the legislation. “The RWDSU has long prioritized the challenge of protecting warehouse workers from stress-induced injuries and illness from limitless quotas and it’s why we pushed for the introduction of the Warehouse Worker Protection Act this year.”

As you can imagine, Warehouse Worker Protection Act advocates had Amazon in mind when they campaigned for the bill. The retail giant operates more than 70 facilities across the state, more than half of which have opened since the start of 2021. In 2020, a report from the Center for Investigative Reporting found the company expected workers at its newer and more automated fulfillment centers to meet unrealistic productivity quotas that made them more likely to sustain serious injuries.

Before handing the reins of the retail giant to Andy Jassy in 2021, former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos denied the company had unreasonable productivity quotas. In his final letter to company shareholders, he said Amazon gave workers opportunities to “take informal breaks throughout their shifts,” adding the company “set achievable performance goals that take into account tenure and actual employee performance data.”