Unity has laid off hundreds of employees in its offices across the globe, according to Kotaku. The video game software development company known for its popular game engine has reportedly let around 300 to 400 staffers go so far. Layoffs are still ongoing, sources said, so those numbers may be higher by the time the company is done. Unity has confirmed to Engadget that it's "realigning some of [its] resources," which has led to the dismissal of approximately 4 percent of its entire workforce. That's consistent with the report that it has let around 300 people go, since its LinkedIn page lists 8,048 employees.

The company told Engadget:

"As part of a continued planning process where we regularly assess our resourcing levels against our company priorities, we decided to realign some of our resources to better drive focus and support our long-term growth. This resulted in some hard decisions that impacted approximately 4% of all Unity workforce. We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Unity and we are supporting them through this difficult transition."

While the mass dismissal affects Unity's entire workforce, Kotaku said it's mostly concentrated on its AI and engineering divisions. On Blind, the anonymous messaging board used by workers in the tech industry, posters claiming to be former Unity employees said they were asked to hop on a Zoom call with a manager and an HR personnel. They lost access to their company Slack and email and had to surrender their laptops within 48 hours, but they were apparently given 30 days to find a new role within the company. According to Kotaku, giving them 30 days to find a new role wouldn't help because the company has instituted a hiring freeze, but Unity told us that's not true at all. 

One of the publication's sources said there's a lot going on within Unity at the moment, including mismanagement and "strategic pivots at a rapid, unpredictable rate." Whatever the reason is for its reorganization, Unity's layoffs are just the latest in a string of job cuts across the tech industry. Niantic also recently laid off around 90 employees, or 8 percent of its workforce, to streamline its operations. Meanwhile, Netflix's latest round of job cuts due to slowing revenue growth had affected 300 staff members. 

Hyundai has revealed the design for Ioniq 6, its upcoming electric vehicle that was inspired by the Prophecy concept EV it showed off in 2020. It retains the Prophecy's futuristic elements without looking like it was a prop made for a sci-fi movie, with its aerodynamic profile and clean lines. Hyundai says the vehicle will have an ultra-low drag coefficient of 0.21 — most modern cars have an average drag coefficient of 0.25 or 0.3 — thanks to its low nose and active air flaps, among other elements. Its elliptical wing-inspired spoiler and slight boat-tail structure help make it more aerodynamic, as well. 

Inside, the Ioniq 6 has a cocoon-shaped interior that's trimmed in sustainable materials, such as eco-process leather or recycled PET fabric for its seats. The company's modular platform for electric vehicles enabled its designers to stretch the car's dimensions and give it a completely flat floor for more legroom and space. For its entertainment and navigation system, it has a modular touchscreen dashboard with a 12-inch touchscreen display and a 12-inch digital cluster. 

Hyundai

The automaker has yet to announce the EV's specs, but to give you an idea, the Ioniq 5 has a 72.6-kWh battery that can deliver up to 300 miles of range. It also boasts 320 horsepower, 446 pound-feet of torque and the capability to go from 0 to 60 MPH in under 5 seconds. Hyundai will reveal the Ioniq 6's full specifications and features during its world premiere in July.

Facebook has been inconsistently enforcing its rule against buying or selling tobacco, marijuana, as well as medical and non-medical drugs in relation to abortion pills. Motherboard recently reported that the website has been flagging posts saying "abortion can be mailed" and has even been temporarily restricting some accounts. Engadget was able to independently verify the information. As social media companies start dealing with content related to the outcome of the Roe v. Wade ruling last week, Meta has admitted to the 'incorrect enforcement' of posts that may trigger rules relating to the buying and selling of pharmaceuticals on its platforms.

Gizmodo reports that Meta communications director Andy Stone has admitted that the website has "discovered some instances of incorrect enforcement" when it comes to its rule against the buying and selling pharmaceuticals. He also said that the company is correcting those instances. 

In a tweet responding to Motherboard's story, Stone said content attempting to buy, sell, trade, gift, request or donate pharmaceuticals aren't allowed. However, content discussing the "affordability and accessibility of prescription medication" is. Posting "abortion pills can be mailed" shouldn't be flagged if that's the case, though it may run afoul of other rules related to promoting crime.

Gizmodo ran a test by posting "abortion pills can be mailed" on different accounts and found that Facebook was only flagging the status update if it was posted on a burner account, or an account that's not regularly used. We were able to verify that, as well. The post we made on a barely used account was flagged, but the update we posted on our main account wasn't. 

We also tried posting about other pharmaceuticals and medicine on our accounts. Our post that said "I'm selling ivermectin, PM me" was flagged, but the one that said "ivermectin can be mailed" wasn't. That's consistent with the website's rule. Our post saying "I'm selling cigarettes," however, wasn't flagged. We also tried posting "You can get abortion pills mailed from Aid Access," which shouldn't have been flagged if "affordability and accessibility of prescription medication" is allowed on the platform. We got restricted barely a minute after posting that on our burner account.

As you can see, enforcement of the rule has been inconsistent, and it's not quite clear why the exact same content doesn't get flagged on a frequently used account when it gets a warning on a barely used one. By flagging content about the mailing of abortion pills, Facebook could be preventing that information from getting to people who need it. Especially since it flags even the status updates of users outside the US. 

The main Facebook website isn't the only Meta property that's been removing information about abortion pills. According to the Associated Press, Instagram has also been deleting posts about the mailing of abortion pills, though our search for #abortionpills yielded over 1,000 results. 

"TikTok is not just another video app. That's the sheep’s clothing." That's what Brendan Carr wrote in his tweet along with a copy of the letter he sent Apple and Google, asking the companies to remove TikTok from their app stores. The agency's senior Republican commissioner references a recent BuzzFeed News report that examined leaked audio from 80 internal TikTok meetings. Based on those leaked audio recordings, China-based employees of TikTok parent company ByteDance had repeatedly accessed private information on users in the US. 

One member of TikTok's Trust and Safety department reportedly said during a meeting in September 2021 that "everything is seen in China." A director said in another meeting that a Beijing-based engineer referred to as "Master Admin" has "access to everything." Just hours before BuzzFeed News published its report, TikTok announced that it migrated 100 percent of US user traffic to a new Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. It's part of the company's efforts to address concerns by US authorities about how it handles information from users in the country. 

In his letter, though, Carr listed other reports showing "concerning evidence and determinations regarding TikTok's data practices" that include previous instances wherein researchers discovered that the app can circumvent Android and iOS safeguards to access users' sensitive data. He also cited TikTok's 2021 decision to pay $92 million to settle dozens of lawsuit, mostly from minors, accusing it of collecting their personal data without consent and selling it to advertisers.

Carr wrote:

"It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing's apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data."

He's giving Apple and Google until July 8th to explain why they aren't removing the app from their stores if they refuse to do so. That said, Carr was the letter's lone signee — it doesn't look like the other FCC Commissioners are involved. We've reached out to all parties to ask for their official statement on the issue. 

HTC has introduced a new phone with metaverse-focused features, like it promised earlier this month. The HTC Desire 22 Pro supports HTC's Viverse ecosystem and will allow users to visit communities even without VR devices using their browsers. It's also compatible with the company's $499 Vive Flow VR headset and can be paired with the device if users want to explore experiences, watch movies and TV or even just access their apps in virtual reality. As Engadget Chinese notes, though, aside from its metaverse-focused offerings, the phone is firmly mid-range.

The HTC Desire 22 Pro has a 6.6-inch display with a 1,080 x 2,412 pixel resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate. It's powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 695 5G chip, a mid-range SoC, has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The device has a 4,520 mAh battery and offers reverse wireless charging. Plus, it has a three-camera system at the back, with a 65-megapixel main, 13-megapixel ultrawide and 5-megapixel depth-sensing cameras. For selfies, the phone has a 32-megapixel front-facing camera. 

A company executive said at Mobile World Congress this year that the manufacturer is gearing up to launch a new high-end device. It's not clear if the executive was talking about this particular phone, but prices for the Desire 22 Pro begin at NT$11990 or around US$404, which means it has the potential to reach a wider audience than more expensive flagship devices. The Desire 22 Pro is now available for pre-order and will start shipping on July 1st in the company's home country of Taiwan. In the UK, buyers can pre-order a unit for £399 and expect shipping to begin on August 1st. Those who also want to get a Vive Flow headset can order a discounted bundle for NT$23,490 (US$791) in Taiwan or £763 in the UK.  

If you post about being able to mail abortion pills to those who need it on Facebook, don't be surprised if you get a warning — or even get your account restricted. A tipster told Motherboard that they were notified a minute after posting "I will mail abortion pills to any one of you" that their status update had been removed. When they tried to post about it again later, they were banned for it. Motherboard was able to replicate the scenario, and we were able to confirm it, as well. We tried posting "abortion pills can be mailed" on Facebook and were quickly notified that we violated the website's Community Standards.

Facebook

In the next slide explaining our infraction, Facebook said doesn't allow users to buy, sell or exchange things such as tobacco, marijuana, recreational drugs and non-medical drugs. To test it out, we posted "I'm selling cigarettes," "cigarettes can be mailed," "anti-depressants can be mailed" and "painkiller pills can be mailed." None of them got flagged. General posts such as "abortion is healthcare" didn't get flagged either. As for our post that did get flagged, we were asked if we would like to accept Facebook's enforcement action or not. After choosing to accept it, our post got removed but we didn't get banned. According to Motherboard, their account got restricted for 24 hours after making several posts that got flagged.

It's unclear when the website started removing posts about mailing out abortion pills and whether it only began after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court's decision made all types of abortion illegal in several states with trigger laws, but people in those states can still get abortion pills shipped to them from international groups like Aid Access. Facebook could be preventing that information from getting to some people who need it, though, especially since it flags posts with "mail" and "abortion pills" even for international users. We posted from outside the US and still got a warning. "Some items aren't regulated everywhere," the slide explaining our violation reads, "but because Facebook is borderless we have global standards that apply to everyone."

The New York Times also recently reported that Facebook's parent company, Meta, told employees not to discuss the Supreme Court ruling within the workplace. Moderators would reportedly swoop in and quickly remove posts about abortion in the company's internal Workplace platform. Meta did, however, tell employees that it would reimburse them for travel expenses if they need to access out-of-state healthcare and reproductive services "to the extent permitted by law."

In a letter posted on her official website, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has revealed that House Democrats have been working on legislation to protect personal data collected by reproductive health trackers. It's one of the three avenues the lawmakers are exploring following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. "Many fear that this information could be used against women by a sinister prosecutor in a state that criminalizes abortion," she explained, though she didn't expound on how the lawmakers plan to protect people's personal data. 

Users have been swapping their period trackers for others they believe can offer them more privacy ever since the Supreme Court decision dropped. It's not unusual for companies to sell user information or to cooperate with law enforcement, and people are concerned about the possibility of investigators using that data to identify them if they ever seek an abortion. As TechCrunch reported, a number of reproductive health apps enjoyed a surge of new signups over the weekend. 

One of those apps is Flo, which announced that it plans to launch an anonymous mode shortly after the Supreme Court decision came out. The mode is supposed to remove one's personal information from their account so that they can't be identified, but Flo has yet to reveal when it will become available. It's worth noting that Flo's average daily installs has been on the decline, based on Apptopia numbers cited by TechCrunch, likely because it has a history of sharing private data with third parties.

Back in 2019, The Wall Street Journal listed Flo as one of the apps that had been giving Facebook access to people's sensitive data. Two years later, Flo settled with the FTC over allegations that it was sharing information with the social network, Google and other third-party companies. As part of that settlement, Flo now has to explicitly ask for user consent before it can give external services access to their personal health information.

Despite the House Speaker's announcement that House Democrats are working "to protect the health and freedom of American women," there's no guarantee that the legislation they're cooking up would be signed into law. It's always smart to take a closer look at how apps are protecting user data by reading their "nutritional label" on iOS or their "safety section" in the Play Store on Android. But for those who want to be truly safe, perhaps the best solution is to not use a period tracking app at all.

A group of Democratic senators is urging the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Apple and Google over their collection of mobile users' information. In a letter addressed to FTC Chair Lina Khan, the lawmakers — Senators Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Cory A. Booker and Sara Jacobs — accuse the tech giants of "engaging in unfair and deceptive practices by enabling the collection and sale of hundreds of millions of mobile phone users' personal data." They added that the companies "facilitated these harmful practices by building advertising-specific tracking IDs into their mobile operating systems."

The senators specifically mentioned in their letter how individuals seeking abortions will become particularly vulnerable if their data, especially their location information, is collected and shared. They wrote the letter shortly before the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, making abortion immediately illegal in states with trigger laws. They explained that data brokers are already selling location information of people visiting abortion providers. The senators also stressed how that information can now be used by private citizens incentivized by "bounty hunter" laws targeting individuals seeking an abortion. 

Android and Google were built with tracking identifiers that are used for advertising purposes. While the identifiers are supposed to be anonymous, the senators said data brokers are selling databases linking them to consumer names, email addresses and telephone numbers. Apple rolled out an update for iOS last year to implement stricter app tracking privacy measures, requiring apps to ask for permission before collecting users' unique Identification for Advertisers device code. 

Google, they said, still enables that tracking identifier by default. The company previously introduced features to make it harder to track users across apps, though, and it recently vowed to refine Privacy Sandbox on Android, "with the goal of introducing new, more private advertising solutions." The tech giant told Ars Technica: "Google never sells user data, and Google Play strictly prohibits the sale of user data by developers... Any claims that advertising ID was created to facilitate data sale are simply false."

Despite the solutions the companies had introduced, the lawmakers said they'd already caused harm. They're now asking the FTC to look into the role Apple and Google played in "transforming online advertising into an intense system of surveillance that incentivizes and facilitates the unrestrained collection and constant sale of Americans’ personal data."

Wyden and 41 other Democratic lawmakers also urged Google last month to stop collecting and keeping location data that could be used against people who've had or are seeking abortions. More recently, another group of lawmakers led by Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Elissa Slotkin asked the company to "crack down on manipulative search results" that lead people seeking abortions to anti-abortion clinics" instead.

Juul has successfully convinced the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to delay the Food and Drug Administration's ban on its products. The agency recently banned Juul from selling and distributing its e-cigarette pens and pods in the US after a comprehensive two-year review. It ordered the company to remove its products from the market and has even started telling retailers from pull them from shelves. This temporary reprieve will allow Juul to keep selling its vape pens and pods — and will allow retailers to keep carrying them without the fear of facing penalties — while the court reviews its appeal on the FDA's decision. 

In its request for an emergency stay, Juul called the FDA ban "arbitrary and capricious." It also said that the agency issued the ruling after "immense political pressure from Congress," because it became politically convenient for them to blame Juul for the popularity of vaping among young people, "even though several of its competitors now have a larger market share and much higher underage-use rates." 

Despite Juul's accusation, the FDA didn't mention youth vaping in its decision. Instead, the agency said it was banning the company's products, because it didn't submit sufficient evidence proving that potentially harmful chemicals don't leach from its proprietary pods into the vapor that users inhale. The agency explained: "...some of the company's study findings raised concerns due to insufficient and conflicting data – including regarding genotoxicity and potentially harmful chemicals leaching from the company's proprietary e-liquid pods – that have not been adequately addressed and precluded the FDA from completing a full toxicological risk assessment of the products named in the company's applications."

Juul, of course, disagreed that it hasn't provided sufficient information and data to the agency. In a statement it sent to Engadget, the company said: "In our applications, which we submitted over two years ago, we believe that we appropriately characterized the toxicological profile of Juul products, including comparisons to combustible cigarettes and other vapor products, and believe this data, along with the totality of the evidence, meets the statutory standard of being appropriate for the protection of the public health."

Juul has a long history of butting heads with the FDA, particularly over underage vaping. Its fruit-flavored vape products were once pretty popular among young people until it suspended their sales and stuck to selling menthol and tobacco-flavored pods. Juul also faced a Federal Trade Commission and a House investigation into whether its marketing efforts targeted teens. Things have changed over the past few years: According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most high school students that use e-cigarettes now favor Puff Bar over any other brand. 

According to The New York Times, the court gave Juul until Monday to file an additional motion. The FDA will then have until July 7th to respond to that. It still remains to be seen whether Juul will be able to continue selling its vaping pens and pods in the US throughout the course of its appeal. Sources told The Wall Street Journal that Juul has started exploring its options if it fails to reverse the ban completely, including filing for bankruptcy.

When you hear the word "bacteria," you probably picture organisms that couldn't be seen unless they're placed under a microscope. A bacterium that has now been classified as the largest in the world ever discovered, however, needs no special tools to be visible to the naked eye. Thiomargarita magnifica, as it's called, takes on a filament-like appearance and can be as long as a human eyelash. As the BBC notes, that makes it bigger than some more complex organisms, such as tiny flies, mites and worms. It was first discovered by marine biologist Olivier Gros living on sunken mangrove tree leaves in the French Caribbean back in 2009. 

Due to the organism's size, Gros first thought he was looking at a eukaryote rather than simpler prokaryotic organisms like bacteria. It wasn't until he got back to his laboratory that he found out that it wasn't the case at all. Years later, Jean-Marie Volland and his team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California took a closer look at the bacterium using various techniques, such as transmission electron microscopy, to confirm that it is indeed a single-cell organism. They've recently published a paper describing the centimeter-long bacterium in Science.

Volland said T. magnifica is "5,000 times bigger than most bacteria" and is comparable to an average person "encountering another human as tall as Mount Everest." One other information Volland's team has discovered is that the bacterium keeps its DNA organized within a structure that has a membrane. In most bacteria, DNA materials just float freely in their cytoplasm. Further, it has around 6,000 billion bases of DNA. "For comparison, a diploid human genome is approximately six giga (billion) bases in size. So this means that our Thiomargarita stores several orders of magnitude more DNA in itself as compared to a human cell," said team member Tanja Woyke. 

While the scientists know that T. magnifica grows on top of mangrove sediments in the Caribbean and that it creates energy to live using chemosynthesis, which is similar to photosynthesis in plants, there's still a lot about it that remains a mystery. And it'll likely take some time before the scientists can discover its secrets: They have yet to figure out how to grow the organism in the lab, so Gros has to gather samples every time they want to run an experiment. It doesn't help that the organism has an unpredictable life cycle. Gros told The New York Times that he couldn't even find any over the past two months. 

Volland and his team now aim to find a way to grow T. magnifica in the lab. As for Gros, he now expects other teams to go off in search of even bigger bacteria, which like T. magnifica, may also be hiding in plain sight.