TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has claimed that, were parent ByteDance to sell the company, that alone wouldn't be enough to prevent it from scrutiny over security concerns. Chew made the assertion following reports this week (which TikTok has confirmed) that the US government has told TikTok to divest itself from ByteDance or face a national ban. "Divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access," TikTok said in the wake of those reports.

Chew claimed that the US and other countries would still have problems with how the app handles user data were it to have a different owner. Officials have expressed fear that China will gain access to user data linked to their residents. 

TikTok's CEO told The Wall Street Journal that, were Beijing-based ByteDance to sell the company, that won't provide more data protection beyond projects it's already working on. TikTok has promised to protect US user data from China by routing it through domestic Oracle servers and putting other safeguards in place, such as third-party oversight of the app's algorithms.

TikTok has spent billions of dollars on that plan, which it calls Project Texas. It has been working on the project over the last two years in an attempt to address US security concerns after former President Donald Trump attempted to force ByteDance to sell TikTok. The company recently announced a similar project for European user data.

Some officials are worried that ByteDance might be compelled to share data with the Chinese government or that China might demand changes to the content that TikTok's algorithms show to Americans. TikTok has claimed it wouldn't provide data to Chinese officials if they asked for assistance with spying — the company says it has not received such a request.

Meanwhile, a former employee of TikTok's trust and safety team has claimed there are significant flaws with Project Texas. They said it would still theoretically be possible for China to access US data as TikTok could still be linked to ByteDance's Chinese news app Toutiao. That said, reports suggest the person left TikTok months before Project Texas was finalized and that he may not know all the details of how it works.

“The idea behind Project Texas is it won’t matter what the Chinese law or any law says, because we’re taking US user data and we’re putting it out of their reach,” Chew said. “You’re talking about real concerns. I think these are the real solutions.”

Chew hasn't said whether ByteDance is open to selling its stake in TikTok. He has also dismissed the option of listing TikTok on the stock market as a publicly traded company any time soon, but that's something his company and ByteDance are mulling.

Next week, Chew will testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He'll discuss TikTok's links to China as well as issues such as privacy and the app's impact on kids.

The US government and dozens of states have banned their employees from using TikTok on their federal- or state-owned devices. Canada and the European Commission have enacted similar bans in recent weeks, while the UK announced a similar measure earlier today.

The UK has become the latest major jurisdiction to ban TikTok from government devices. The measure is in place with immediate effect following a security review ordered by ministers. The move is part of broader restrictions on third-party apps on government devices.

"The security of sensitive government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices," Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Oliver Dowden, the government's second highest-ranking minister, said in a statement. "The use of other data-extracting apps will be kept under review."

Dowden noted in Parliament that this is a precautionary measure. "We know there is already limited use of TikTok across government, but it is also good cyber hygiene," he said.

The ban is intended to protect sensitive data on government devices as well to prevent things like location data harvesting. The measure doesn't apply to personal devices belonging to government employees, ministers or the public. In addition, the UK government will only allow its staff to use a third-party app on an official device if it's on an approved list.

There will be exceptions to the TikTok ban in cases where the app is needed for work purposes, such as for law enforcement or those working on projects related to online harms. These exceptions will be granted on a case-by-case basis and security measures will need to be in place.

The government noted that people should be aware of each app's data policies. It said TikTok requires users to give permission for the app to access certain information stored on a phone or tablet, such as geolocation data and contacts. Officials say they are worried about how this data may be used.

Leaders in many countries and other territories have expressed concern that China may gain access to their residents' or officials' data through TikTok. ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is headquartered in Beijing. Many legislatures have banned TikTok from government-owned devices in recent months, including the US, dozens of states, Canada and the European Commission.

On Wednesday, it was widely reported (and confirmed by TikTok) that the US government has told ByteDance to sell the app or face a complete ban in the country. There are several pieces of legislation in progress that seek to grant President Joe Biden or the Commerce Secretary the power to ban TikTok. The reported development comes almost three years after former President Donald Trump attempted to force ByteDance to sell TikTok and a week before TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify before a House committee.

After teasing some of the titles during the recent State of Play event, Sony has unveiled the full slate of additions to the PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium catalog for March. It’s shaping up to be another strong month for the service.

Tchia will be just the second game to debut on PS Plus Extra on its release date, following Stray. It’s a gorgeous-looking sandbox adventure in which you can take over and control animals and objects, likely in a far less sinister way than in Prey. When you feel the need to take a break from exploring the New Caledonia-inspired world, you can bust out a fully-playable ukulele. Play the right tunes and you can attract animals or cause rain to fall.

Also coming to the library on March 21st is Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection. It includes Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, both of which have been remastered beautifully for PS5. Life Is Strange: True Colors and Life is Strange 2 will join the original game and Life is Strange: Before the Storm in the lineup too.

The other games that will hit the PS Plus Extra and Premium catalog this month are:

• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction

• Ghostwire Tokyo (which is also coming to Xbox Game Pass in April)

• Immortals Fenyx Rising

• Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

• Street Fighter V Champion Edition

• Untitled Goose Game

• Final Fantasy Type-0 HD

• Rage 2

• Neo: The World Ends with You

• Haven

Premium subscribers will soon gain access to a few more older games at no extra cost. Sony will add Ridge Racer Type 4, Ape Escape 2 (both PS1) and Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror (PSP) on March 21st.

On the downside, several games are reportedly leaving the Extra catalog on the same date. Monster Energy Supercross - The Official Videogame 5, Override 2: Super Mech League, Danger Zone, Dungeons 2, Ghost of a Tale, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Velocibox, Victor Vran: Overkill Edition and WWE 2K22 will no longer be playable through the subscription service after that time.

Meanwhile, Sony has revealed the first game that all PS Plus members will be able to claim in April. Meet Your Maker, an intriguing fortress-building and -looting game from Dead by Daylight studio Behavior Interactive, will be available on the Essential tier on its April 4th launch day.

TCGplayer, the eBay-owned trading card marketplace, is facing its fourth unfair labor charge in the space of two months. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) claimed that, one business day after TCGplayer employees voted to form eBay's first union last Friday, the company fired a worker for engaging in union activity.

The CWA called the firing of worker Iris St. Lucy “retaliatory” in the wake of the election. The union claims that TCGplayer “management has escalated its anti-union war against workers” as a result of the vote. All non-supervisory workers at TCGplayer's authentication center in Syracuse, New York (who numbered 272 as of Friday) are now represented by the union.

Since TCGplayer workers announced their second unionization attempt in January, the CWA has filed three other unfair labor charges with the National Labor Relations Board. Among other things, the CWA has accused the company of requiring employees to attend anti-union meetings, interrogating workers and monitoring those who wore clothing or badges that identified them as supporters of TCGunion-CWA, the union they eventually formed under the CWA.

“Not only are eBay and TCGplayer violating labor law, the company is undermining its workers’ rights to union representation, fair wages, dignity on the job and the ability to support their families," CWA secretary-treasurer Sara Steffens said in a statement. "TCGplayer needs to stop these attacks and commit to bargaining a contract in good faith.”

Engadget has contacted TCGplayer for comment.

Just under three and a half years after Ryan Reynolds bought into Mint Mobile and became the public face of the provider, the Deadpool star is set to make a windfall from his investment. T-Mobile has announced an agreement to buy Mint Mobile's parent company Ka’ena for as much as $1.35 billion in cash and stock.

The final price will depend on Ka’ena’s performance for a certain period before and after the deal closes, which is expected to happen later this year. Ka’ena also owns Ultra Mobile, a provider focused on international calling, and wholesaler Plum.

Reynolds is believed to own between 20 and 25 percent of Mint, according to The New York Post. He'll stay on in his creative role as Mint spokesman. Mint was founded in 2015 and spun out from Ultra in late 2019.

Mint, which has run on T-Mobile since its inception as a mobile virtual network operator, found success thanks to its charismatic pitch man and budget-conscious pricing. T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert confirmed in a YouTube video regarding the news that Mint will keep its $15 per month pricing.

T-Mobile said in a statement that Mint and Ultra will complement its existing prepaid services. Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim will continue to manage the brands, which T-Mobile says will generally operate as a separate business unit. Meanwhile, T-Mobile is hoping to tap into the marketing nous of Mint and its famous co-owner.

“Mint has built an incredibly successful digital direct-to-consumer business that continues to deliver for customers on the Un-carrier’s leading 5G network and now we are excited to use our scale and owners' economics to help supercharge it — and Ultra Mobile — into the future," Sievert said. "Over the long-term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile."

“Mint Mobile is the best deal in wireless and today’s news only enhances our ability to deliver for our customers," Reynolds said. "We are so happy T-Mobile beat out an aggressive last-minute bid from my mom Tammy Reynolds as we believe the excellence of their 5G network will provide a better strategic fit than my mom’s slightly-above-average mahjong skills."

You can never have too much digital storage space, so it's always a smart move to pick up the best SSDs whenever they're on sale and you have the cash to spare. The Samsung T7 is our current pick for the best portable SSD around, and the 1TB variant has dropped to its lowest price to date. You can pick it up now from Amazon for $80. It typically retails for $140.

The T7 has fairly fast sequential read speeds of up to 1,050MB/s. It's available in three colors: blue, black and red. If you have a little more flexibility, you might be interested in picking up a 2TB version of the T7 instead. It's up to 50 percent off, depending on the color. The red variant has dropped to $135.

If you're in the market for a microSD card but don't necessarily need a ton of storage for your particular device, it's worth considering the Samsung's 128GB EVO Select card. That has also dropped to a record low of just $12.49. It usually costs $20. Bear in mind that you won't need a faster card than this for your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck — those devices only support read speeds of up to 104MB/s.

Meanwhile, several other Samsung storage options went on sale last month and most of those deals are still live. The T7 Shield, a more rugged version of the T7, is $90 for the 1TB version (2TB and 4TB versions are on sale too). As for the 980 Pro with a built-in heatsink, which is one of the best PS5 SSDs on the market, that's available for $120 for 1TB of storage — almost half off the usual price.

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The long-awaited System Shock remake at last has a precise release date, but it's one that marks yet another delay. Publisher Prime Matter previously planned to release the game sometime this month. "We had hoped to bring the game to market by the end of March, but that turned out to be just beyond our reach; we are after all merely human (unlike Shodan!)," it said.

Now, the game is scheduled to hit Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store on May 30th. It will cost $40. Early buyers will get a copy of System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition at no extra cost when Nightdive Studios' port of that game arrives.

However, there's more disappointing news for those who've been waiting for the System Shock remake to come to consoles. It will land on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S sometime after May. Prime Matter says it will reveal more details when they become available.

The remake of the 1994 first-person RPG has been a long time coming. Nightdive first announced it in 2015 and we got our first look at it the following year. In early 2021, the studio said System Shock would arrive that summer, which obviously didn't come to pass.

According to Prime Matter, the latest version will retain the gameplay of the influential original game while upgrading the visuals, audio, controls and interface. Nightdive is overhauling the hacking feature and introducing fresh enemies, while the revamped combat includes a dismemberment system. You can check out a slice of System Shock now, as there's a PC demo available.

Amazon has pulled back the curtain on its first slate of Project Kuiper antennas. The terminals, which will transmit data to and from Amazon’s Low Earth Orbit internet satellites, resemble furniture. The largest of the bunch is even the size of a full-blown patio table — it measures 19 inches by 30 inches. That model is intended for enterprise, government and telecommunications operations. Amazon said it will deliver internet speeds of up to 1 Gbps.

The standard terminal for consumers has a smaller footprint, measuring 11 inches square with a thickness of one inch. Without its mounting bracket, it weighs less than five pounds. This antenna should be able to deliver speeds up to 400 Mbps, Amazon says.

The company hasn’t revealed how much the terminals will cost, but says it should be able to build the standard model for less than $400 per unit. SpaceX's Starlink charges $599 for a terminal. That said, there will be a more compact and wallet-friendly terminal available from Amazon too. A seven-inch-square antenna will weigh one pound and offer speeds of up to 100 Mbps.

Amazon

Amazon designed its own baseband chip for the terminals. It says the chip, which has the code name Prometheus, has "the processing power of a 5G modem chip found in modern smartphones, the capability of a cellular base station to handle traffic from thousands of customers at once and the ability of a microwave backhaul antenna to support powerful point-to-point connections." The same chip is being used in Project Kuiper satellites and ground gateway antennas. Amazon says the chip will enable each satellite to process up to one terabit of traffic per second.

Project Kuiper is set to deploy two prototype satellites on the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. That launch is scheduled for May. Amazon expects to begin mass production of satellites by the end of this year and to commence launching them in the first half of 2024. It plans to start offering Project Kuiper service to customers later next year. Earlier this month, Amazon received conditional FCC approval to launch thousands of Low Earth Orbit satellites.

At its annual health event, The Check Up, Google announced a slew of updates for Search, Fitbit and developers. On the Search front, the company says it will soon identify community health centers and make it clear whether those facilities have free or low-cost care options. It seems there will be a label that reads, "offers free or low-cost care based on individual circumstances."

In addition, Google says it has employed Duplex to call hundreds of thousands of US healthcare providers and verify their information. The conversational AI has also been used to check whether providers accept various state Medicaid plans.

After several pauses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicaid will have a re-enrollment deadline this year. If folks in the US who are currently enrolled in the program fail to sign back up by March 31st, they'll lose their healthcare coverage. To help ensure people maintain their coverage, Google says it will make it easier for everyone to find re-enrollment information on Search.

Google

To assist those seeking help in a crisis, Google has teamed up with ThroughLine, which it says is the "largest verified network of mental health and crisis helplines around the world." As a result of the partnership, Google will expand the number of crisis helplines it displays at the top of Search results in more languages and countries for queries related to personal crisis situations, such as suicide and domestic violence.

Google

As for Fitbit, Google is opening up more of the Health Metrics Dashboard features available to users who don't have a subscription. The company says that, for instance, users will be able to view trends for metrics such as breathing rate, skin temperature and blood oxygen levels over longer periods of time.

Meanwhile, Google touched on some health-focused updates for developers. It discussed a suite of development tools called Open Health Stack, which it described as "open-source building blocks built on an interoperable data standard." In other words, Open Health Stack is designed to help developers build apps for healthcare workers to access key data and insights, such as population health data.

Google says the suite is based on Fast Healthcare Interoperability Standards and can be used to build apps that keep data secure for offline use in areas without internet connectivity or cell coverage. For instance, a developer in Kenya called Intellisoft Consulting is building a maternal health app designed to help community health volunteers and pregnant women in rural communities.

Meta has announced another round of sweeping layoffs in a bid to cut costs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is letting go of another 10,000 workers or so and closing "around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired." 

Meta will reduce the size of its recruiting team imminently and inform affected employees on Wednesday. The company will then announce layoff and restructuring efforts of its tech departments in late April and business teams in late May. Zuckerberg said it might take until the end of 2023 to complete the process, but the timelines might be different for Meta's operations outside the US. After restructuring, Meta plans to lift the hiring freeze.

"This will be tough and there’s no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success," Zuckerberg wrote. "They’ve dedicated themselves to our mission and I’m personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve."

In addition, the company will "announce restructuring plans focused on flattening our orgs" and canceling lower priority projects, Zuckerberg said. Reports have suggested that the layoffs will impact teams working on wearable devices as part of the Reality Labs hardware and metaverse division. The "flattening" involves removing layers of management, while Meta will "will ask many managers to become individual contributors" — in other words, it seems managers will have to take on some of the tasks their employees focus on.

"We still believe managing each person is very important, so in general we don’t want managers to have more than 10 direct reports. Today many of our managers have only a few direct reports," Zuckerberg wrote. "That made sense to optimize for ramping up new managers and maintaining buffer capacity when we were growing our organization faster, but now that we don’t expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defragment layers as much as possible."

In November, Meta laid off more than 11,000 people, which equated to around 13 percent of its headcount at the time. That marked the company's first mass layoffs. Four months later, Meta announced planscutting thousands more workers.

The latest cost-cutting drive was widely expected. The Financial Times, Bloomberg and The Verge have all reported in recent weeks that more layoffs were in the pipeline. Zuckerberg, who will soon go on paternity leave for his third child, recently described 2023 as a "year of efficiency" for the company and doubled down on that in his note to employees today.

"Since we reduced our workforce last year, one surprising result is that many things have gone faster. In retrospect, I underestimated the indirect costs of lower priority projects," he wrote. "A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster. People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling."

The latest layoffs follow a year in which Meta saw declines in quarterly revenue for the first time as its ad business slowed down. In October, the company also said it expected to lose more money on Reality Labs (the division that runs Meta's virtual and augmented reality initiatives) in 2023 as it continues to build its vision of the metaverse. Zuckerberg touched on this in his note, stating that "I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years."

Last week, Meta announced price cuts for the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets in an attempt to sell more units. The company recently unveiled another potential revenue stream in the form of Meta Verified, which allows users to pay for Instagram and Facebook verification along with some other perks.

Many notable tech companies have announced major rounds of layoffs over the last several months, including Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. Twitter has been shedding staff almost on an ongoing basis since Elon Musk took over in October. So, Meta isn't alone here, but it's the first among its peers to have a second formal round of mass layoffs since late 2022.