After teasing the feature last month, WhatsApp has starting rolling out emoji reactions to all users around the world, it announced. In the coming days, you'll be able to react with one of six emojis: Thumbs Up 👍, Red Heart ❤️, Face with Tears of Joy 😂, Face with Open Mouth 😮, Crying Face 😢, and Folded Hands 🙏. The messaging app also introduced two more features — 2GB file sharing and an increase in group members to 512 people. 

On top of the message reactions, WhatsApp will now allow you to send files a whopping 2GB in size, up 20 times from the previous 100MB limitation. That seems designed to support video files in particular "and we think [it] will be helpful for collaboration among small businesses and school groups," the company said. It also introduced the ability to create group chats with up to 512 people, double the previous limit.  

The features will be rolling out over the next week across iOS, Android, macOS and Windows, so you many not see them tout de suite. That should be just the beginning as well, because WhatsApp has previously said that it plans to support reactions with all emoji and skin tones down the road.

In a win for net neturality, ISPs agreed to end their legal challenge to a 2018 Californa law that bars providers from throttling service. Telecom groups and California Attorney General Rob Bonta today jointly agreed to dismiss the case, reportedReuters. 

It’s fair that say that luck hasn’t exactly been on the telecom industry’s side. Earlier this year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reconsider its ruling that California’s law be upheld. And last year, the US DOJ dropped its own lawsuit over the net neutrality law, which the agency had filed during the Trump administration.

“Following multiple defeats in court, internet service providers have finally abandoned an effort to block enforcement of CA's net neutrality law. This is a win for California and for a free and fair internet,” wrote Bonta in a tweet.

After Trump-appointed FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai overturned the agency's net neutrality rules in 2017, California’s legislature decided to enact its own law. The state’s net neutrality law, which went into effect in August 2018, expanded on previous federal rules by banning the use of “zero-rating” by ISPs in an anti-competitive manner. Zero-rating occurs when an ISP exempts any of its affiliated services from eating away at a customer’s data caps. For example, AT&T Wireless once exempted HBO Max from the data caps of its internet customers. The company dropped this practice last year, and blamed the impact of California’s law. Digital rights groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation have argued that zero-rating is hostile to consumers, especially those from low-income households.

Federal net neutrality rules that were blocked under the Trump administration have yet to be restored by the FCC under President Joe Biden. That’s because the five-member panel is currently short one member, which they’ll need in order to vote on net neutrality. The agency is awaiting the Senate confirmation of Gigi Sohn. But thanks to intense lobbying from telecom groups and a number of Republicans (and moderate Democrats) in Congress, Sohn’s confirmation is stalled at present.

Whisteblowers are accusing Facebook of purposely blocking government, healthcare and emergency services pages in Australia in order to thwart a potential law that would require platforms to pay for news, according to WSJ. The accusers say the platform last year created an algorithm to identify pages that would affect the most publishers. But Facebook reportedly didn’t just take down pages for media outlets — it also removed pages for hospitals, governments and charities.

According to the documents, Facebook put together a team of roughly a dozen employees who were tasked with removing news content from Australia. The team sidestepped an existing Facebook database of existing news publishers. Instead, the Facebook employees quickly created a new algorithm with a definition of news broad enough to grab a large number of non-news pages. “If 60 percent of [sic] more of a domain’s content shared on Facebook is classified as news, then the entire domain will be considered a news domain,” stated one internal document.

The end-result was that — for several days — Australians weren’t able to access or share any news or information from governments and healthcare services pages on Facebook. The timing was particularly bad, since the nation was just about to embark on a mass vaccination campaign for Covid-19. A number of Australian health officials decried the move. "It is truly ironic that Facebook has allowed health misinformation to be spread via its platform throughout this pandemic, yet today much of this misinformation remains on Facebook while official information sources are blocked … [The decision is] corporate bullying at its worst,” Australian Medical Association President Dr. Omar Khorshid told NBC last year.

Facebook’s troubles in Australia began when the nation’s Parliament began devising ways to force companies to pay publishers for news content distributed via search products and social media platforms. Back in February 2021, the Australian House of Representatives passed a version of this legislation opposed by Facebook. The company then blocked Australians from sharing or viewing news on the platform altogether. Following days of public outcry, the Australian Parliament eventually negotiated with Facebook and passed a new, more lenient bill that had the support of the social media giant. Facebook then reversed the ban.

Facebook has maintained that blocking the government and healthcare pages was accidental. “The documents in question clearly show that we intended to exempt Australian government Pages from restrictions in an effort to minimize the impact of this misguided and harmful legislation,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told WSJ. “When we were unable to do so as intended due to a technical error, we apologized and worked to correct it. Any suggestion to the contrary is categorically and obviously false.”

The documents that the whistleblowers submitted were filed with the US Department of Justice and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, WSJ reported. A number of members of the US Congress were also given copies of the Facebook documents.

And. And. And. And. And. 

For whatever reason that specific string of words seems to be enough to permanently brick a Google Docs page. Noted Google's support pages mere hours ago, the poster who seemingly discovered this unusual bug is quick to point out that the series of five conjunctions, separated by periods, is case-sensitive (at least if the goal is to cause the document in question to become unusable.) 

Engadget was able to confirm the issue on a 16-inch 2019 MacBook Pro running Monteray 12.3.1 and Google Chrome 100.0.4896.127... and we were summarily greeted by the "Something went wrong" popover as well as its loathsome cousin "Unable to load file." Reloading the page as prompted results in the same popovers. In effect, a death loop. 

Attempts to replicate the issue on Firefox 99.0.1 on a (significantly older, worse) MacBook Pro running Big Sur 11.1 were not successful but a respondent on the Google Support forums claims to have experienced the same problem on the same version of FireFox. 

What exactly is happening here remains a mystery, though we've reached out for clarity on what is likely a small if amusing technical oversight. How this bug was even discovered is itself an enigma, given that there's rarely cause to pile a slew of Ands on top of each other like this. Project Gutenberg turned up no instances in its database, while a (cursory) search through Google Books produced at least one example — seemingly meant to reproduce the effect of stammering — though it did quite meet the punctuation or capitalization criteria. We'll update should we hear back. 

Activision Blizzard is continuing a hiring spree in light of its ongoing harassment scandal. Blizzard has hired Jessica Martinez as its first Vice President of Culture. She'll both implement and expand the game studio's culture strategy, and lead a learning and development team that will help create a work environment where people feel "safe, valued" and eager to cooperate.

Martinez is a 14-year veteran of Disney, where she was a Chief of Staff and advised both the Chief Security Office and the parks' Chief Technology & Digital Officer. She was known for building a diversity- and values-focused culture, according to Blizzard, and led efforts to harmonize security when Disney bought key Fox studios and channels.

The move comes just weeks after Activision Blizzard hired diversity chief Kristen Hines. It also follows months of employee shuffles and organizational efforts in the wake of the scandal. The publisher has ousted or disciplined numerous workers for participating in or tolerating a hostile work culture, including former Blizzard president J. Allen Brack. It also launched a "Workplace Responsibility Committee" to fight discrimination and harassment. 

Whether or not these measures will be enough still isn't clear. Activision Blizzard chief Bobby Kotick has remained despite pressure to resign and a New York City lawsuit. The Communications Workers of America union, meanwhile, has filed a complaint with US labor officials accusing the company of silencing talk about harassment lawsuits. While Martinez may bring valuable cultural improvements, there's still evidence the firm is resistant to some forms of change.

The smart home ecosystem is getting a little more integrated: Google just updated its Amazon Alexa Skill to work on its latest Nest cameras. So if you already own a variety of Nest and Alexa devices, they'll work together more seamlessly moving forward. Now, you can stream live feeds from your Nest cameras, doorbells and other devices to anything from your Amazon Fire TV to any Echo device. Amazon made a similar gesture to open up its own smart home ecosystem last month, when it announced that its doorbells and security cameras would work with Google Nest, Ring, Abode and other third-party devices. Amazon’s Ring doorbell already works with Google Home and Apple Homekit.

A few other integrations between Nest and Alexa have been available for a while. For example, if you own a Google Nest thermostat, you can tell Alexa to change the temperature of your home. Older Nest cameras and doorbells have also had limited Alexa abilities, but the new skill allows for even more cross-platform integration. According to a recent post on Google Nest’s blog, the updated skill means Alexa will now support streaming from the Nest Cam with Floodlight, as well as the battery-powered models of Nest Cam and Nest Doorbell to the Echo Show, Fire TV or Fire Tablets.

If you own a Nest Doorbell, you can also talk to people through your door with any of your Alexa devices (such as the Echo, Echo Show, Fire TV and Fire Tablet). Eventually, Alexa will be able to announce when a Nest Cam or Nest Doorbell detects a person at your front door as well.

You won't have to leave the social media sphere to catch some of the coverage surrounding FIFA World Cup matches. Fox Sports has expanded its relationship with Twitter to offer live pre-game shows and in-match previews (through @foxsports and @foxsoccer) for every match of World Cup 2022 and Women's World Cup 2023. You can also expect "near real-time" highlights during play as well as post-match discussions.

The exclusive deal for both the men's and women's tournaments is a first for Twitter, according to the social network's global content head TJ Adeshola. Naturally, you can expect Fox to support the streams through ads.

You'll still have to use the Fox Sports app or website (plus a pay TV subscription) if you want to stream the matches themselves. Like it or not, the broadcaster still wants to steer you toward its most lucrative business. Even so, this at least offers more ways to immerse yourself in the group stages or build up hype for a must-win knockout match.

Lyft is slowly but surely bringing back shared rides in more cities. Users in San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, Las Vegas and Atlanta will once more be able to take shared rides.

That option was suspended soon after the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March 2020. Lyft started offering shared rides again last summer in select cities such as Chicago, Denver and Philadelphia. The company plans to bring the feature back to more markets in the coming months.

Users can save money by taking a shared ride, since they'll be splitting the cost with someone else. Ride requests are currently limited to one person. These rides will have a maximum of two passengers, though one can sit in the front if the driver's okay with it. 

The company also says that drivers can opt out of shared rides without penalty through 2022. Last month, Lyft dropped its requirement for drivers and passengers to wear masks, which are now optional for shared rides too (depending on local rules).

Lyft's recovery from the pandemic has been slower than rival Uber's, and greater availability of shared rides could provide a boost to business. This week, the company said it would need to spend more on incentives to entice drivers back to its platform.

E3 isn't happening at all this year, but that doesn't mean there won't be a ton of gaming news to look forward to in June. Three days before Xbox and Bethesda's event, the third annual Summer Game Fest showcase will take place on June 9th at 2PM ET.

As always, Geoff Keighley will be the master of ceremonies for Summer Game Fest Kick Off Live. Expect new game announcements, world premieres and fresh looks at other upcoming titles. Immediately after that event wraps up, Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition will shine the spotlight on a bunch of indie games.

You'll be able to watch the Summer Game Fest double bill on a wide range of platforms, including YouTube, Twitch, Twitter and Facebook. For the first time, you'll be able to catch Summer Game Fest Kick Off Live (and, in December, The Game Awards) at IMAX theaters in the US, Canada and the UK. If you really want to see a bunch of trailers and teasers for upcoming games in IMAX, you can buy a ticket for Summer Game Fest on May 12th.

“Video games are the most powerful, immersive and spectacular form of entertainment in the world, so it’s only natural to bring them to fans in IMAX, the world’s most immersive cinema format,” Keighley said in a statement.

NVIDIA isn't the only one making it easier to play Fortnite on Apple devices. Microsoft has partnered with Epic Games to make Fortniteplayable for free on Xbox Cloud Gaming, no subscription required. So long as you have a Microsoft account in one of 26 streaming-enabled countries, you can play the battle royale title through the web browser on an iPhone, iPad, Android device or Windows PC.

The streaming version supports both controllers and touch. Creative mode is also free, although you'll need to pay if you want to fight AI villains in the Save the World campaign. Fortnite might not be alone, either. Microsoft said it would "look to bring" other free-to-play titles to Xbox Cloud Gaming.

There's no mystery behind Microsoft's team-up. This could boost Xbox Cloud Gaming and drive sign-ups for Game Pass Ultimate, which offers a catalog of games you can stream on multiple platforms. Microsoft is also eager to spite Apple — the Windows creator has backed Epic's antitrust battle, arguing that Apple is stifling competition through in-app payments and restrictions on cloud gaming apps. Free Fortnite gameplay could draw attention to Apple's policies while softening the blow for Microsoft, Epic and gamers.