Back in 2020, a Wall Street Journal report revealed that Amazon employees routinely used data collected from third-party sellers to launch competing products for the company's private-label business. The US Congress is already investigating the e-commerce giant over that practice, and according to The Journal, so is the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apparently, the SEC is looking into how Amazon disclosed its business practices, including how its employees used data for its private-label brands. 

As The Journal notes, the SEC is in charge of regulating how publicly traded companies communicate with their investors. It can impose fines and other enforcement actions against them if it finds that they had failed to disclose important business information to investors in a timely manner. As part of the probe, which has reportedly been underway for over a year now, the SEC asked for emails and other communications from several senior Amazon executives.

After the original report from The Journal came out, Amazon denied that it uses third-party seller data to launch competing products. It launched an internal investigation of its private-label division, but it refused to provide Congress a copy of its results. Last month, the House Judiciary Committee asked the Department of Justice to launch another investigation into Amazon over a possible criminal obstruction. 

The committee said back then that the company refused to turn over business documents and communications "to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers' data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results." As you'd expect, an Amazon spokesperson denied that's the case and referenced the "huge volume of information [the company has] provided over several years of good-faith cooperation with this investigation."

Google will be violating South Korean law if it pushes through with its plan to remove apps linking out to external payment methods, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said in a new legal guidance. Last year, the country passed a law that requires major app stores to accept alternative payment methods, and Google readily agreed to comply: It allowed developers to offer an alternative in-app billing system to live alongside its own. The tech giant still collects a cut for payments made through that alternative billing system, though, and it's only 4 percent lower than the commission the company collects for payments made through its own system.

If the typical service fee for a purchase is 15 percent, then Google collects 11 percent instead. For ebooks, it collects a 6 percent commission instead of 10. Korean developers weren't happy, and as The Register and The Wall Street Journal report, they responded by linking out to third-party payment systems in order to avoid paying Google's fees. The tech giant had already blocked them from being able to update their apps, and it warned them that their apps will be removed from the Play Store if they continue to offer external links by June 1st.

An association of developers in Korea brought the situation to KCC, asking the commission to clarify whether Google's actions comply with the law. See, the new law is rather vaguely worded and doesn't explicitly state if outlinking is legal or not. Based on the commission's legal guidance, the KCC sees external links to outside payment systems as perfectly OK and that Google is violating the law by restricting updates and deleting apps that offer them.

The KCC can conduct preliminary status inspections to identify specific violations if Google removes apps linking out to external payment methods as planned. If it finds that the company truly has violated the law, then it can slap Google with a fine equivalent to up to 2 percent of its app store revenue in the country. A company spokesperson told The Journal that Google is reviewing the guidance and that it will work with local app developers to expand users' choice.

Google recently launched a pilot program that allows participating developers like Spotify to offer their own payment method. They have to offer their own payment systems in-app, however, alongside Google Play's. As for Apple, it recently started allowing "reader" apps such as Netflix and Spotify to link to their own websites for payment as part of a settlement with the Japan Fair Trade Commission.

Anker, a company most known for its charging products, is getting into the 3D-printing business. The company has just announced AnkerMake, its new 3D printing brand, and its first model called AnkerMake M5. Anker claims that the M5 solves the most critical issues that have prevented 3D printers from going mainstream, including their typically slow print speeds.

The AnkerMake M5 has a basic print speed of 250 mm/s that's meant to be used if you're working on more detailed projects that need a smooth finish. However, the printer also has a much speedier mode that gives it the power to print up to 2,500 mm/s². The end result is rougher and less detailed, and the mode is mostly suitable for prototypes and perhaps random toys, but Anker says it enables the M5 to reduce average print times by up to 70 percent compared to other printers. 

In addition to being speedy, the M5 was designed to be easy to set up: It will apparently only take 15 minutes to get it ready to start printing. To address another pain point — the need for constant supervision — Anker gave the M5 the capability to monitor print jobs with a built-in AI-powered camera. If it detects issues like nozzle plugging, it can send an alert to your phone. You can also view live feeds of your print jobs through the Anker mobile app wherever you are. 

Whether the M5 can deliver on all those promises remains to be seen. At the moment, it's a Kickstarter project, which means it could take a while for Anker to start shipping the product, and that's if the campaign reaches its goal. If you want to back the project and don't mind waiting, you can get the the AnkerMake M5 for its super early bird price of $429. After that, you'll have to pledge at least $499 to secure a unit.

Uber customers in San Francisco might soon find a traditional taxi waiting for them when they use the app to summon a ride. According to San Francisco Chronicle, the ride-hailing giant has inked a deal with Yellow Cab SF and Flywheel, the company that operates an Uber-like app used by taxi drivers across companies in the city. The agreement will give 1,075 taxi drivers in the area access to Uber customers in the coming months. Uber recently struck a similar deal in NYC, allowing people in the city to hail any of its 14,000 taxi drivers through the app. 

The companies were able to finalize the deal, because the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board has just voted in favor of allowing taxis to accept flat upfront rates for rides hailed through a third-party app. Customers can expect to pay UberX rates, which are calculated based on trip time and distance on top of a base fare, for taxi rides. The year-long pilot for the deal will begin on August 5th.

Uber's rates are typically lower than metered fares, though they could be higher during surge times. Kate Toran, SFMTA's director of taxis, said during the board meeting that Uber and Lyft fares are about 80 to 85 percent of metered rates. While drivers could earn less than usual for Uber rides, their participation is completely optional. They can accept Uber rides whenever they want, and there are no consequences for rejecting them. 

Flywheel and Yellow believe the deal would benefit drivers, who could accept Uber rides to fill in gaps for dead hours. "[H]aving some revenue come in versus no revenue is a much better situation in the end, even if it is lower than the taxi rate," Yellow Cab CEO Chris Sweis said. Still, not all SF cab drivers are thrilled about the development. Mark Gruberg, a board member of the San Francisco Taxi Alliance, expressed concerns about regular taxi customers being ignored during Uber surge times. Another driver told ABC7News that earning less money from Uber rides would mean he'll have a harder time paying off the debts he took to pay for his medallion, which cost $250,000.

If Uber gets its way, though, there'll be no taxi left that isn't part of its network. Uber exec Andrew Macdonald recently said during an investor presentation (PDF) that that the company aims to put every taxi on Uber by 2025. Doing so wouldn't only increase its driver supply, it could also unlock new markets where people don't have their own cars to use for the service. 

Olive Union has started taking pre-orders for Olive Max, its new pair of hearing aids that doubles as a pair of ordinary wireless earbuds. The company says the model was built-on top of the success of Olive Pro, the 2-in-1 hearing aids/earbuds it released back in 2020. While Olive Pro looks like a pair of Apple AirPods, Max uses a custom-built design that wraps around the top the wearer's ear for a "more stable listening experience." The new model also serves as a the debut product for Olive's adaptive hearing technology, which is apparently its most requested feature. 

Olive's adaptive hearing tech is powered by an AI that learns and improves the feature the more a user wears the device. It then uses machine learning tech to automatically customize Max's sound settings to suit the wearer's current environment. The new model also comes with a new voice auto-focus feature and a new sound engine that give it the capability to detect voices better, as well as to more effectively reduce and filter background noise. Olive claims Max is capable of separating voices from noises with such "incredible accuracy" that it won't distort the user's own voice while it's filtering out ambient sounds. 

The Olive Max is an FDA Class 2 hearing aid that works for people with mild to severe hearing loss. It can last for up to 8 hours on a single charge, though its charging case can extend its battery life for up to 18 hours. It also only takes five minutes to set up using its accompanying iOS or Android app. The model is now available for pre-order for $299 and will start shipping in the fourth quarter of 2022. After the promo ends, Olive Max will be sold for $549.

When Apple rolled out SharePlay with iOS 15.1 last year, it was only supported by a handful of apps. The list has grown a bit over the past months, with ESPN, Twitch and Disney+ updating their apps with the capability to use the group viewing feature. Now, you can add Hulu to the roster. The streaming service's latest iOS update introduces SharePlay as a feature for its iPhone, iPad and Apple TV app, so you can hold watch parties for shows like The Handmaid's Tale or The Dropout, which tells the story of controversial Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. 

To use SharePlay, all participants in the watch party will have to be on iOS 15.1 or newer and will need to have Hulu accounts and subscriptions. You have to start a FaceTime call before you open the app. After you do, you'll see an alert at the top of your screen asking if you want to stream your content. Anyone who joins the session will have access to the pause, skip forward and rewind controls to make sure you're all watching the same thing at the same time. FaceTime will also have a picture-in-picture box at the top, which will show whoever is talking at the moment. SharePlay even comes with a feature called smart volume that automatically lowers the show's volume whenever somebody in the call is talking. 

In addition to SharePlay support, Hulu's latest update has also introduced a new feature that gives you a way to easily flip between the live TV channels you're currently watching. You can now get the update Hulu app from the Apple App Store.  

Elon Musk, who recently became Twitter's largest shareholder, has posted a poll on the website asking users whether they want an edit button. His options are a misspelled "yse" and "on," which might make you think that the whole thing is joke until you see that the poll has been retweeted by Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal. "The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully," Agrawal wrote, hinting that the poll could lead to an actual edit button on the social network. 

Many Twitter users have asked for an edit button over the years, but the website has remained staunchly resistant to those requests. In a video Q&A with Wired back in 2020, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey said the website will "probably never" add an edit button. He explained that the social network started as a text messaging service, and you can't take back a text once you've sent it. Twitter apparently wanted to preserve that vibe and feeling.

Musk, who's been a prolific tweeter way before he purchased 9.2 percent of the social network, might serve as the catalyst for the company to change that outlook. As of this writing, 74.7 percent out of the 1,439,779 accounts that participated in the poll voted "yse" to an edit button. Whether Twitter will immediately start working on the feature if "yse" wins remains to be seen. That is, if it hasn't started developing it yet — the official Twitter account recently posted that the company is "working on an edit button," but that was on April Fools' Day.

It's also unclear how an edit button would work on Twitter, where reposting other people's content is widely practiced. If the person who tweeted the original post edits it, will the retweeted content reflect the change, as well? And will the edit button for a tweet be available indefinitely or only for a short period of time? Dorsey said during the Wired interview that Twitter previously considered giving users a 30-to-60-second window to correct something, which would be more than enough time to edit spelling mistakes and other minor changes.

The Discord servers of popular NFT projects, including the Bored Ape Yacht Club, were targeted by scammers in the early hours of April Fools'. Some users reported losing money to the bad actors who hacked the projects' bots to post fake offers with links to their phishing websites, Motherboard reports. One of the phishing posts by a compromised Bored Ape bot read: "Oh no, our dogs are mutating. MAKC can be staked for our $APE token. Holders of MAYC + BAYC will be able to claim exclusive rewards just by simply minting and holding our mutant dogs."

If a user clicks on the link in the post, they're taken to a website where they're tricked into minting a fake NFT in exchange for Ethereum. Other versions trick victims into sending the scammers NFTs by making them think their collectible was going to be wrapped. Two wallet addresses were tied to the hacks, one of which sold a stolen Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT and then sent the other 19.85 ETH, or around $69,000 based on current exchange rates. The recipient wallet reportedly sent 61 ETH ($213,000) to a mixing service, which can obscure the origin and trail of potentially identifiable crypto coins. 

It's unclear how many people fell victim to the scams, but the projects' administrators quickly caught on and posted a warning to their fans. Bored Ape asked users not to mint anything from its Discord and clarified that it wasn't doing "any April Fools stealth mints." Nyoki Cub posted a similar warning and admitted that its "server was also compromised... due to a recent large-scale hack." It said it was able to take control of the situation within 30 minutes.

NFTs are making their way into mainstream popularity, with big-name celebs such as Justin Bieber and Madonna putting the spotlight on the digital collectibles. Schemes such as these are bound to become more as long as people keep pouring money into non-fungible tokens. 

Activision Blizzard's studios will have the power to determine their own return-to-office policies despite the company leaders' decision to drop its vaccine mandate. That's what Activision Blizzard executive Brian Bulatao said in a follow-up email after the company caught flak following the leak of his first one. In that first missive, Bulatao announced that the the company is lifting its vaccine mandate prior to US employees' return to office in the coming months. Not everyone's happy with the change, as you'd expect, and a group of workers scheduled a walkout for April 4th. 

The ABK Workers Alliance, a group that formed after California's fair employment agency filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the gaming titan, is staging a walkout to demand the "immediate reversal to lifting the vaccine requirement." It also wants the company to offer remote work as a permanent solution and to give each employee the freedom to decide whether to work remotely or in the office. An ABK Workers Alliance rep told Polygon that previous meetings with the company all ended with the decision to continue the vaccine mandate for workers returning to office. "This recent change was not run by any employees before being announced," they said. 

Bulatao sent out his second email following the walkout's announcement, telling employees that the company's individual studios can "determine the processes and policies that work best for their employees and locations based on local conditions and risk." Also, returning to office remains a voluntary decision at this time. According to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra told staff in an email that the developer will continue its vaccine requirements "for at least the next few months." Ybarra also revealed that at least 80 percent of Blizzard personnel has already uploaded proof of vaccination. 

In a statement Activision Blizzard sent to Polygon, it didn't say whether its workers' reaction to dropping the vaccine mandate influenced Bulatao's follow-up email. It did say, however, that it will not retaliate against workers who participate in the walkout:

"The health and safety of our employees is at the absolute forefront of everything we do, including our return to office policy. While Activision Blizzard’s U.S. vaccine mandate has been lifted, for the majority of our employees, we are still operating under a voluntary return to office opportunity. In addition, employees who are not comfortable returning to the office are encouraged to work with their manager and our HR team to explore options for working arrangements that suit their individual situations. We will continue to monitor conditions and make adjustments to the policy as needed.

We recognize some employees may be participating in a walkout to express their views. The company supports our employees’ right to express their opinions in a safe and nonthreatening way, and will not retaliate for any decision to participate in this walkout. The company also hopes that those who walk out will conduct themselves in a legal, safe, and nonviolent manner."

The original Angry Birds game is back. Sure, there are other, newer entries in the Angry Birds franchise out there — and even a couple of movies — but this one's for those who have a special place in their hearts for the game that started it all. In a letter to fans published last year, Rovio explained that it had to take its older titles out of circulation, because they used outdated game engines and design. "Today’s mobile technology and games landscape has evolved to a place where supporting them was untenable," the company wrote. The developer also couldn't leave them up without updating them, because they'll soon be incompatible with the latest mobile operating systems. 

Apparently, there was a "big outcry" for Rovio to bring back the older games, especially the original, so it decided to work on bringing the classic experiences back. The company said at the time that it has to figure out "what is possible and for which games," so it's unclear if other older titles will also get remakes. Rovio rebuilt the original Angry Birds from the ground up using Unity, which allowed the company to recreate the feel of the classic for newer devices. That's a much more involved process than simply touching up older graphics or updating game mechanics. 

The new version of the game called Rovio Classics: Angry Birds, is now available from the Apple App Store and from Google Play. It will set you back 99 cents to download, but it doesn't have in-app purchases and even makes the Mighty Eagle (an old in-app purchase) available at no extra cost.