It's the end of an era at the company formerly known as Facebook. Sheryl Sandberg has officially stepped down as Chief Operating Officer on August 1st, as revealed by a SEC filing noticed by TechCrunch. In the filing, Meta said Javier Olivan is now the company's COO and that Sandberg will only remain an employe until September 30th. After that and going forward, Sandberg will serve as a member of Meta's Board and will receive compensation as a non-employee director. 

Sandberg first announced that she was leaving her role as COO of Meta after 14 years in early June. Mark Zuckerberg revealed at the time that Olivan will take on the COO role, but that his responsibilities will be different from Sandberg's. Olivan will have a "more traditional COO role where [he] will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous," the company CEO said. 

As The Wall Street Journal noted in a piece about Sandberg back in June, she joined Facebook in 2008 and led the business side of the company, allowing Zuckerberg to focus on engineering work. In more recent years, she became the face of the social network when it comes to leading public response to controversies, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Before Sandberg announced her departure, The Journal reported that the Meta COO used company resources to help kill negative reporting about Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, who she was dating at the time. In mid-June, the publication also reported that Meta’s lawyers are investigating Sandberg's use of the company's resources and employees for her foundation and to promote her book Option B. 

Sandberg is leaving the company just as it has started preparing for "serious times." In a meeting with employees, Zuckerberg revealed that Meta is experiencing "one of the worst downturns [it has seen] in recent history." As a result, Meta had to slash its target number for new engineers this year. In addition, company leadership reportedly told managers to identify poor performers and to "move to exit" them if they can't get back on track. 

Amazon is giving some Prime members access to another perk they can take advantage of if they'd like to buy from a store nearby but can't be bothered to put on outside clothes. The e-commerce giant has announced that Prime subscribers in more than 10 metro areas in the US will now be able to shop from select local brick-and-mortar stores through Amazon and then have the items delivered to their home on the same day. At the moment participating retailers include apparel brands PacSun, Superdry and Diesel, as well as popular vitamin retailer GNC. 

To order from the participating retail stores, customers can browse their curated selections on the Amazon app or website and then choose same-day delivery upon checkout. Amazon will forward the order to the customer's local store to be fulfilled by associates. An Amazon delivery partner will then pick up the order from the retail location and deliver it to the customer. Delivery is free for purchases above $25, but will set customers back $3 for orders below that amount. That said, buyers can also choose to buy and pay online but pick up their orders in person, which sounds like a great option if they just don't want to browse in-store and line up to pay. 

As TechCrunch notes, this is the e-commerce giant's latest move to keep up with rival services that offer same-day deliveries, such as Instacart. It also ensures it's not falling behind competitors in any way: Walmart, for instance launched a same-day delivery service for local retailers last year. The new Prime perk is now available in a handful of US cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Miami, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Seattle and Washington D.C. Amazon says it will expand it to more cities, as well as introduce new retailers into the service, including Sur La Table and 100% Pure, in the coming months. 

In a recent filing, Microsoft told New Zealand’s Commerce Commission that Blizzard Activision produces no “must-have” games. Weird thing to say when the company plans to spend $68.7 billion to buy the gaming giant behind Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft and plenty more.

In the document, Microsoft said: “There is nothing unique about the video games developed and published by Activision Blizzard that is a ‘must have’ for rival PC and console video game distributors that give rise to a foreclosure concern.”

Attempting to downplay the importance of Call of Duty is just one of the ways Microsoft has tried to placate regulators. In February, the company pledged it would continue to make the franchise available on PlayStation consoles beyond any existing agreements between Sony and Activision.

— Mat Smith

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An e-bike sharing company co-founded by Usain Bolt appears to have shut down

It left its equipment in the streets in some cities.

An e-bike- and scooter-sharing startup co-founded by Olympian Usain Bolt appears to have stopped operations. Bolt Mobility offered bikes in five cities, including Portland, Burlington, Vermont and Richmond in California, and others. "We learned a couple of weeks ago (from them) that Bolt is ceasing operations," a transportation planner in Chittenden County, Vermont, told TechCrunch. "They’ve vanished, leaving equipment behind and emails and calls unanswered.”

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Apple's App Store homepage will soon feature ads

You'll also see them on individual app pages.

Apple famously bragged it’ll never invade your privacy to serve ads, but it does have an ad business on its App Store and elsewhere. The company is now expanding that business by adding a new ad slot to its Today homepage tab and on individual app pages. The company says these new ad slots will adhere to Apple's policies on privacy and transparency, by not offering personalized ads to users under 18, never using sensitive data and avoiding hyper-targeting.

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The best Xbox games for 2022

Whether you have Series X, Series S, One X or One S, there's something here for you.

Engadget

Microsoft’s console strategy is unique. Someone with a nine-year-old Xbox One has access to an almost-identical library of games as the owner of a brand-new Xbox Series X. That makes it difficult to maintain meaningfully different lists for its various consoles — at least for now. But while next-gen exclusives may be few and far between, there are a lot of gamers who simply haven’t experienced much of what Microsoft has had to offer since the mid-'10s.

It’s in that frame of mind that we approach this list, now updated: What games would we recommend to someone picking up an Xbox today? Expect more updated guides to the best games throughout the week.

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Twitter investor sues Elon Musk in a bid to force through $44 billion takeover

The proposed class action suit accuses Musk of breaching his fiduciary duty to Twitter shareholders.

Reuters

It's not only Twitter trying to force Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion. An investor filed a proposed class action lawsuit to try stopping Musk from backing out of the deal. Luigi Crispo's suit accuses Musk of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty to Twitter's shareholders. Musk last month claimed the company made “false and misleading representations,” and that it misrepresented the number of bots and fake accounts on its platform. Crispo concurred with Twitter's claims that Musk is using false claims about bots and spam to wriggle out of the deal without a valid legal standing.

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Spotify's latest fancy feature for Premium users is a play button

Premium features.

It’s 2022 and Spotify is adding the most basic of functions to its iOS and Android apps: dedicated play and shuffle buttons on playlists and album pages. Until now, tapping the button on most playlists started playback, shuffled. This vanilla playback ‘feature,’ however, will only be available to Spotify Premium subscribers.

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TikTok might be working on a music service

There’s already a "TikTok Music" trademark application filed.

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for "TikTok Music." The service would let users "purchase, play, share, download music, songs, albums, lyrics... live stream audio and video... edit and upload photographs as the cover of playlists... [and] comment on music, songs and albums."

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The US network that matches donated kidneys, livers and hearts with desperate patients has serious issues and "needs to be vastly restructured," according to a government review seen by The Washington Post. It reportedly relies on out-of-date technology, has crashed for hours at a time and has never been audited by federal for security or other flaws by federal officials.  

The current system has been administered by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) for 36 years. That non-profit is overseen by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Around 106,000 people are on a waiting list for organs, with most seeking kidneys. Over 41,000 organs were transplanted last year, setting a record, but 22 people die each day waiting, according to the article. 

In its review completed 18 months ago, the White House's US Digital Service recommended that the government "break up the current monopoly" held by UNOS. "In order to properly and equitably support the critical needs of these patients, the ecosystem needs to be vastly restructured." A big sticking point is that the government has never been allowed to inspect the computer code behind the system, because UNOS hasn't allowed it. "The code is extremely large," said UNOS chief executive Brian Shepherd. "They can come in and ask for specific pieces."

The Washington Post obtained the review in draft form as it has yet to be finalized. Leaders of the Senate Finance Committee who saw the report reportedly warned DHS officials that they had "no confidence" in the security of the network, asking the White House to step in to protect it from attacks. "We request you take immediate steps to secure the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network system from cyber-attacks," wrote committee chair Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Charles E. Grassley. 

The other main issue is the requirement for manual input that can lead to mistakes or create timing issues for organ matches. "When nearly 100 percent of hospitals use electronic records, the notion that we rely on human beings to enter data into databases is crazy. It should be 85 to 95 percent automatic," a former chair of the UNOS liver transplant policy committee told The Post.

The transplant results are the most disconcerting part of the report. In the US in 2020, 21.3 percent of donated kidneys weren't transplanted, according to a report. That compares to 9.1 percent in France, 10 to 12 percent in the UK and eight percent in the Eurotransplant consortium of eight EU countries including Germany. "You would be hard pressed to think you couldn’t at least get 5 percent better [in the US], which would be thousands of transplants," a former HHS official told The Post. For more, check out the article here. 

Apple will no longer require corporate employees to wear masks at "most locations," according to an internal email from the company's COVID-19 response team seen by The Verge. "We are writing to share an update to our current protocols," the email reads. "In light of current circumstances, wearing a face mask will no longer be required in most locations."

The company goes on to say that employees can, of course, continue to wear them if they prefer. "We recognize that everyone’s personal circumstances are different. Don’t hesitate to continue wearing a face mask if you feel more comfortable doing so. Also, please respect every individual’s decision to wear a mask or not."

Apple is removing the mask mandate despite the fact that the number of new daily cases in the US currently sits at over 114,000, according to the CDC. Near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, San Francisco's BART metro system recently brought back its mask mandate, following the spread of the BA.5 COVID-19 variant that can evade immunity from past COVID-19 infection and vaccination. 

Earlier this year, Apple said it would require employees to work at least three days per week at the office by May. However, it later softened that stance, saying that staff can continue to stay at home if they're not comfortable.

This is your chance to get an Apple Watch Series 7 if you've been looking to grab one at a discount. The 41mm version of the smartwatch with green aluminum case and the clover sport band is currently on sale for $280 on Amazon. That's $119 less than its retail price and is just a dollar more than what the device sold for on Prime Day. The Watch Series 7's screen is larger than its predecessors', and Apple even used a refractive edge to make it seem like the display curves along the sides of the case. By doing that, tech giant made the screen appear roomier, which makes a huge difference for a device that generally comes with a smaller display.

To take advantage of the larger real estate, Apple shipped the Series 7 with a larger user interface that has larger fonts and a stretched-out keyboard that's much easier to type on. As we mentioned in our review, it's easier to hit the right keys in this model, as well as to read the time and measurements, such as your heart rate, than in the older ones. The tech giant also rolled out watch faces with more information to make use of the watch's bigger screen. 

While the watch's display is its largest upgrade, it also charges faster than previous models. It got to 100 percent in an hour during our tests, whereas the Apple Watch SE only got to about 60 percent. Apple promises the same battery life as previous models, as well, but the Series 7 lasted longer during our tests. Although the only option that's available for $280 is the green Series 7, you can also get the red and the blue watches at a discount. Either color option will set you back $330 when their discounts are applied at checkout.

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New York police must now comply with a public records request related to its use of facial recognition and other surveillance on protestors. A judge has ordered the New York Police Department to release documents pertaining to its monitoring of Black Lives Matters protests during the summer of 2020, requiring it to release 2,700 emails and other documents to the public or state why it fall"and/or allege with specificity that each document falls within one of the enumerated exemptions of Public Officers Law."

The NYPD previously rejected a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request by Amnesty International and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project for records related to its use of facial recognition and surveillance tools on activists (as well as a subsequent appeal to that FOIL request), leading both groups to sue the law enforcement organization last year. The police agency has argued that the records request would cover over 30 million documents, and that following through would be “unreasonably burdensome."

In a ruling issued on Friday, New York Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Love rejected the NYPD's reasoning. Legal teams for the NYPD and Amnesty International have met since the lawsuit was filed, and narrowed down the number of documents to 2,700 in total, an amount that Love called “far more reasonable." The judge also ordered both Amnesty International and STOP to re-submit its FOIL request, this time tailoring it to cover the 2,700 documents in question.

A number of public records requests from Buzzfeed, Wired and other news outlets revealed that the NYPD has an extensive range of surveillance tools at its disposal. The policy agency has purchased technology such as cell site simulators, gait recognition software, X-ray vans and facial recognition software from notorious vendor Clearview AI.

Despite the company's commitment to decrease its carbon footprint, Amazon's emissions grew by 18 percent last year, according to the annual sustainability report it released today. While online shopping increased during the pandemic’s second year, the company also rapidly expanded its number of warehousing operations — faster than consumer demand could support. For the entirety of 2021, the company’s activities emitted the equivalent of more than 71.54 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (for comparison, that's one and a half times the amount the U.S. government emitted in 2019.)

But this figure is undoubtedly a drastic undercount. While Amazon does include emissions from its warehouses and logistics network, as Revealreported this year, the company employs a sort of loophole. While other retailers, like Walmart and Target, account for pollution related to any goods they sell, Amazon only counts carbon emissions for Amazon-branded products, which make up around one percent of total sales. Third-party sellers (that is, the entities responsible for the other 99 percent of what's sold through its online marketplace) are left to perform their own carbon emissions accounting independently — regardless of whether those sales are fulfilled through Amazon's warehousing or not. Many of these businesses, however, likely do not meet the minimum threshold for mandatory emissions reporting

Environmental experts have long voiced concerns over the immense climate toll of Amazon’s operations, especially its rush and two-day shipping options. Despite the lack of progress, Amazon’s goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 was noted in the report.

The company doubled its network of fufillment centers during the pandemic to keep up with the spike in demand, at a rate that outpaced consumer sales. Amazon reported a $3.8 billion net loss in the first quarter of 2022, the bulk of which came from an investment in more warehouses and staff. But the company now appears to be scaling back its building efforts amidst a decline in orders. USA Todayreported today that Amazon has paused or delayed the building of 18 warehouses in 12 states.

BMW already offers two different versions of its i4 all-electric sedan in the US, but the automaker will add a third, more affordable variant to the mix starting next year. On Monday, BMW announced the 2023 i4 eDrive35. The EV will start at $52,395 – with a $995 destination fee included – when it arrives in the US in the first quarter of 2023.

As the entry-level model in BMW’s i4 line, the eDrive35 features a smaller battery and less powerful motor than its eDrive40 and M50 stablemates. With a usable capacity of 66 kWh, BMW estimates the eDrive35 will be good for an EPA range of about 260 miles. By contrast, you can expect to get about 271 miles from the M50 and 301 miles from the eDrive40. DC fast charging allows the eDrive35’s battery to go from 10 percent to 80 percent in about half an hour.

With a single rear axle motor, the eDrive35 also outputs less power than its two counterparts. It has an estimated horsepower of 281 and 295 lb-ft of torque. That’s 55 less horsepower than the eDrive 40. However, it doesn’t seem the eDrive35 will be much slower than its more expensive sibling. BMW says the car can accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds. The eDrive40 can achieve the same feat in 5.5 seconds. All things considered, those are reasonable tradeoffs when you consider the eDrive40 and M50 start at $56,395 and $66,895, respectively.

Inside, the eDrive35 features the same dashboard unit found in the eDrive40. Expect a 12.3-inch infotainment display and a 14.9-inch instrument panel behind a single curved glass surface. It should come with all the same safety features as well, including adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking. BMW expects to start production on the 2023 i4 eDrive35 before the end of the year.

Discord has begun rolling out an overhauled Android app that addresses one of the most consistent complaints with the software. If you follow the company, you’ve probably seen it often announce new features only to note they will launch on iOS and desktop first before arriving on Google’s operating system. We saw that recently with the release of Server Profiles. According to Discord, that’s about to become a thing of the past.

In a blog post published on Monday, the company said it recently rebuilt its Android app using React Native. Discord has employed the framework for iOS development ever since Meta first open sourced React in 2015. Now that both of Discord's mobile apps are on the same underlying codebase, the company notes Android users can expect feature consistency.

Discord

Additionally, the company says Discord users will see a more consistent user experience across platforms. As one example, the Android app will feature a larger default font that is more in line with the iOS version of the software. Discord also anticipates it will release future updates faster.

“As Discord continues to grow across platforms, we want to find ways to support you and your communities as quickly and efficiently as possible, regardless of which device or platform you happen to be using,” the company said. “Utilizing React Native across every mobile platform Discord is on is just one of the tools that helps us support what you do, and we can’t wait to show you how.”

If you already have Discord installed on your Android phone, the company says you can expect the overhauled app to arrive on your device in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, new Android users can download the software from the Google Play Store.