As the meme goes, the goal of every Twitter user is to avoid being the main character of the day. But if you end up being that unlucky soul, it turns out Twitter is prepared to help you survive the potential trolling onslaught. As Bloomberg reports, the company has developed Project Guardian, an internal list of thousands of accounts who could potentially be attacked by other users. Being on that list fast-tracks any complaints related to those users on Twitter's moderation systems.

While it may sound a bit suspect, the big takeaway from Bloomberg's reporting is that Project Guardian is just a predictive aspect of Twitter's security measures. And unlike Facebook's treatment of VIP's, which has been criticized for allowing celebrities and politicians to break that platform's rules, Twitter's system doesn't necessarily grant more privileges to users. 

Project Guardian also includes some well-known athletes, media personalities and politicians, but Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, tells Bloomberg that the list doesn't include famous users. As, as we mentioned, it also helps to protect normal people who end up going viral.

“The reason this concept existed is because of the ‘person of the day’ phenomenon,” Roth said. “And on that basis, there are some people who are the ‘person of the day’ most days, and so Project Guardian would be one way to protect them.”

In an ideal world, Twitter would be able to give every user the same amount of security support. But, as Bloomberg notes, the company currently receives too many moderation requests to manage that. Perhaps that's an argument that user safety should be scaled in proportion with user growth. And while Project Guardian helps to protect some users, it's also a smart way for Twitter to squash harassment that could also hurt its own image. You could argue that's true for practically every security measure a social media company takes, though.

You won’t find a clear distinction between organic search results and paid ads on Amazon, according to a complaint the Strategic Organizing Center filed on Wednesday with the Federal Trade Commission. The organization, which is a coalition of labor unions, analyzed more than 130,000 search results and found that about 28 percent of the results you see on Amazon represent ads. What’s more, SOC says those ads don’t comply with FTC guidelines designed to make it possible for consumers to distinguish between sponsored content and organic search results.

In 2013, the agency said companies should feature prominent shading or borders, in addition to clear text that is properly situated and sized to avoid confusion. SOC found that zero percent of Amazon’s advertisements featured prominent shading and only about 1.1 percent had an easily distinguished border. When it came to the company’s use of “sponsored” labels, SOC found that in about 22 percent of ads the disclosure was buried under more prominent labels, such as ones that said “Highly rated” and “Today’s deals.” Additionally, those disclosures used a font that was smaller and lighter than the ones the company employed to advertise if a product was liked by other customers or part of a deal.

Elsewhere, SOC claims Amazon employs a technique called “lazy loading” where sponsored labels take longer to appear, particularly on slower internet connections. Using a 12 to 25Mbps connection, the organization found those labels could take up to three seconds longer to load than the top banner ad. We’ll note here we had difficulty verifying that claim at Engadget.

SOC has asked the FTC to take “aggressive and swift action” against the company. "Amazon’s violations are so omnipresent that Amazon’s representation that its platform presents ‘search results’ to consumers is itself deceptive," it said.

Amazon disputes SOC's findings. “This report is incorrect and misunderstands FTC guidance – ads in Amazon’s store always include a clear and prominent ‘sponsored’ label, implemented in accordance with FTC guidelines,” an Amazon spokesperson told Engadget. “We design our store to help customers discover products we think may best meet their needs – sponsored ads is one of the ways to help them find products they may be interested in.”

It’s hard to say if the FTC will take up SOC’s complaint against Amazon. And, even if it does, what kind of action it could take against the company. Part of the problem here is that the agency’s own guidelines leave some room open for interpretation.

“We understand that there is not any one specific method for clearly and prominently distinguishing advertising from natural search results, and that search engines may develop new methods for distinguishing advertising results,” the FTC said in 2013. “Any method may be used, so long as it is noticeable and understandable to consumers.”

At the same time, this is exactly the kind of issue the agency is likely willing to take up under recently appointed chair Lina Khan. In 2017, Khan, then a student at Yale Law School, published an article titled “Amazon's Antitrust Paradox” in which she argued current US policies and laws weren’t enough to keep companies like Amazon accountable.

The White House's renewable energy push now includes a transformation of the federal government. President Biden has issued an executive order that would require the government to stop buying combustion engine vehicles by 2035, and to switch all buildings to renewables and other zero-carbon energy sources by 2050. The administration willbuy only carbon-free electricity by 2030, and aims to cut building emissions in half by 2032.

Biden saw the measure as a way to "lead by example" and encourage both a "carbon pollution-free" electricity industry by 2035 and net zero emissions for the entire economy by 2050. The federal government is the largest employer, energy user and land owner in the US, the President said, and its shift to renewables could influence private businesses.

It's a modest goal in some ways. The timeline is very long, for a start. Multiple states will have banned gas-powered car sales by 2035 — why would it take the federal government that long to switch a relatively modest 600,000-vehicle fleet to EVs and other emissions-free machines? The 300,000 buildings are more daunting, but the order gives officials roughly three decades to make the transition.

At the same time, there are plenty of challenges. The feds depend on a wide range of buildings and vehicles across the country, many of them with different requirements. It may take a highly coordinated effort to transition everything to zero-emissions transport and renewable energy, even if the scale is relatively modest. And then there's the question of future administrations. As we've seen before, a new presidency can undo environmental regulations and delay or even thwart emissions reduction plans. The targets offer plenty of opportunities for reversals.

The order is still notable even if there are setbacks. It's an acknowledgment that efforts to limit climate change aren't confined to the private sector, and it could prompt contractors to transition to environmentally friendly products in a bid to win federal deals.

In the midst of multiple lawsuits and investigations over allegations of gender discrimination and sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard, an employee on Wednesday made a public statement about the abuse she says she's experienced over her four-year career at the studio. Christine works for Blizzard, the group responsible for games including Overwatch and Diablo, and she stood outside the studio's headquarters in Irvine, California, with her lawyer, Lisa Bloom, by her side. 

Through tears, Christine said she experienced years of sexual harassment at Blizzard, even though it had started out as her "dream job."

"I was so excited to be a part of a community that seemed to care so much about their employees," Christine said. "Unfortunately, that didn't happen to me. Since I've been employed at Blizzard, I've been subjected to rude comments about my body, unwanted sexual advances, inappropriately touched, subjected to alcohol-infused team events and cube crawls, invited to have casual sex with my supervisors, and surrounded by a frat-boy culture that's detrimental to women."

Christine said she brought these negative experiences to her supervisors and they were brushed aside. According to her statement, her superiors said the men harassing her were "just joking" and that she should "get over it." She was told not to go to HR. She was told her abusers had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law.

Christine said that after she complained about the sexual abuse she was experiencing, she was demoted and faced retaliation. She said she was denied shares in the company and full profit-sharing, and she received minimal raises.

In her statement, Christine said her mental health was shattered by these events, but she was going public in order to fight for a safe work environment for all Activision Blizzard employees.

"Blizzard has some amazing people that work for them, but we need to feel safe and supported by people in leadership roles, and hold people accountable for their actions," she said.

Activision Blizzard is facing multiple investigations and lawsuits regarding its alleged frat-boy culture. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing is suing the studio after an investigation uncovered years of discriminatory hiring practices, a systemic failure to treat sexual harassment seriously, and a culture that encouraged abuse. The result, according to the DFEH report, was a studio where just 20 percent of employees were women, and leadership roles were held only by white men.

Lisa Bloom, Christine's lawyer, made a statement of her own after the employee spoke.

"We are here because sexual harassment victims at Activision Blizzard have been ignored," Bloom said. "They are still suffering and it's time that they are prioritized."

Following an investigation by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission earlier this year, Activision Blizzard was ordered to establish an $18 million fund to compensate victims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the studio. Bloom argued that this amount is far too low, considering there are hundreds of victims. She also pointed out that Activision Blizzard has already missed critical deadlines when it comes to distributing this money.

"I think we can all agree that the $18 million number is woefully inadequate," Bloom said.

Bloom then outlined three demands. She first said Activision Blizzard should establish a streamlined, fair and fast process for all victims to resolve their legal claims, and asked for a fund exceeding $100 million. Second, Bloom said the studio should deliver a real apology to Christine and the other victims, and third, she demanded a review by a neutral third party of the career damage employees like Christine have endured, with the goal of remedying any discriminatory decisions.

Bloom has ample experience in this legal arena, most recently representing victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

Activision Blizzard employees have staged a handful of walkouts in protest of the studio's response to these allegations, which has been dismissive and generally terrible. More than 800 workers in November signed a petition calling for CEO Bobby Kotick to resign, considering he's held that position for 30 years and has overseen the alleged culture of harassment and discrimination the entire time. Kotick's tenure at the studio and his power over the board is also likely why he hasn't yet been forced out.

After more than five years, Instagram plans to bring back “a version” of its chronological feed next year, the company’s top executive said on Wednesday. Speaking to lawmakers at a Senate hearing on Instagram and teen safety, Mosseri said that he supports “giving people the option to have a chronological feed.”

“We're currently working on a version of a chronological feed that we hope to launch next year,” Mosseri said, adding that the company has been working on the feature “for months.”He didn’t share additional details about how such a feed would work, but said that the company is “targeting the first quarter of next year” for a launch.

Launching an option for a chronological feed would be a major reversal for the photo sharing app, which has consistently defended its algorithmic feed despite persistent complaints and conspiracy theories from users about how their posts are ranked.

Developing…

Apple won't have to allow App Store developers to direct users to alternative payment systems for the time being. At the last minute, an appeals court judge granted Apple's motion to delay App Store changes that were to take effect on December 9th.

"Apple has demonstrated, at minimum, that its appeal raises serious questions on the merits of the district court's determination that Epic Games, Inc. failed to show Apple's conduct violated any antitrust laws but did show that the same conduct violated California's Unfair Competition Law," the decision reads, according to 9to5Mac. “Therefore, we grant Apple’s motion to stay part (i) of paragraph (1) of the permanent injunction. The stay will remain in effect until the mandate issues in this appeal.”

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who oversaw the case between Apple and Epic Games, issued an injunction in September to prevent Apple from stopping developers who wanted to include "buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing." Apple typically takes a 30 percent cut of in-app purchases, and these measures would have allowed developers to use other payment systems.

Apple filed an appeal against that permanent injunction in October, claiming that it would “take months to figure out the engineering, economic, business, and other issues” that were required of such changes. Judge Gonzalez Rogers denied the appeal, but Apple took it to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In August 2020, Epic informed Fortnite players on both iOS and Android that they'd receive a discount if they bought the virtual V-Bucks currency if they bypassed Apple and Google's in-app payment methods. The latter two companies removed the battle royale game from their stores and Epic swiftly filedsuit against them both.

The Apple case went to trial in May. Judge Gonzales Rogers ruled in Apple's favor in almost all counts. Among other things, she determined that the App Store doesn't violate antitrust rules. Epic appealed the ruling a couple of days later.

As robots have steadily expanded their operations out of the controlled environments of research labs and into the chaos of real-world architectural infrastructure, getting from point A to point B has become a major challenge — take stairs, for example. In response, roboticists have developed a number of solutions, from installing rotors so that the robot can helicopter over obstacles or, in Boston Dynamics case, execute backflips that would give Simone Biles pause. And then there's Daniele Pucci, head of the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence lab at the Italian Institute of Technology, who has taken the audacious step of strapping a fully functional jetpack akin to what Richard Browning developed onto the back of an iRonCub synthetic humanoid with hopes of eventually blasting it into the sky.

You'd think we'd have learned our lesson about the dangers of building aerial humanoid robots after our first time through Age of Ultron but Pucci's team believes that such systems could one day act as first responders to the roughly 300 natural disasters that kill around 90,000 people worldwide annually. We've seen a slew of disaster response bots — some humanoid, some not so much — emerge from labs for more than a decade, often with varying degrees of success.

Humanoid robots have an advantage over both more esoteric builds and traditional UAVs when it comes to disaster response because they can more easily manipulate a world, which is already designed for human use. However when a natural disaster strikes, much of that human-centric infrastructure could become damaged or otherwise rendered impassable, which negates many of the humanoid robot's initial advantages. But by combining a humanoid design with the capability of flight, Pucci's team can leverage the best aspects of both technologies.

"Aerial Humanoid Robotics unifies aerial manipulation and humanoid robotics. By doing so, aerial humanoid robots overcome the lack of terrestrial locomotion of aerial manipulators and extend the locomotion capabilities of humanoid robots to the flight case. Aerial humanoid robots can then walk, fly, manipulate and transport objects, thus offering energetically efficient solutions to payload transportation and object manipulation," the IIT team wrote in 2019.

"Aerial humanoid robotics extends aerial manipulation to a more robust and energy efficient level. In fact, aerial manipulation is often exemplified by quadrotors equipped with a robotic arm," Pucci told IEEE Spectrum. "These robots can’t move around by means of contact forces with the environment, and they often struggle with flying in windy environments while manipulating an object, requiring precise position control for accomplishing manipulation tasks. So the extra hand of a flying humanoid robot could establish a contact point between the robot and the environment, thus making the robot position control simpler and more robust."

"I truly believe that aerial humanoid robotics can be used as a test-bed for actuated flying exoskeletons for human beings," he continued. "The recent successful story of Richard Browning shows the engineering feasibility of these futuristic actuated exoskeletons. However, the journey in front of us is still long, and we can use flying humanoid robots to boost this journey and avoid lots of tests on humans."

Pucci's most recent study, Momentum-Based Extended Kalman Filter for Thrust Estimation on Flying Multibody Robots, is slated for publication in the January issue of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. 

Guerrilla Games has rolled out the latest Horizon Zero Dawn update on PC, which should improve the game's performance. The RPG now supports NVIDIA's DLSS and AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling tech. The game previously supported AMD's FidelityFX CAS. Guerrilla also says it improved the shader management system.

NVIDIA claims DLSS will improve Horizon Zero Dawn performance by up to 50 percent. Other PC games that are getting DLSS support this month include Lemnis Gate, Chorus and Icarus.

Meanwhile, Sony revealed more details about a PC version of another of its blockbuster PlayStation games: God of War. It too will support DLSS, as well as NVIDIA Reflex (which is minimizing system input lag).

Like Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War will have unlocked framerates on PC. You can also expect HDR support, higher-resolution shadows and more detailed assets. Players can control Kratos with their keyboard and mouse, third-party controllers or Sony's DualShock 4 or DualSense peripherals.

Santa Monica Studio also announced the PC specs for God of War. You'll need at least an NVIDIA GTX 960 or AMD R9 290X GPU, 8 GB of RAM, 70 GB of storage and an Intel i5-2500k or AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor.

God of War will arrive on PC on January 14th. Meanwhile, God of War Ragnarök is scheduled to hit PS4 and PS5 sometime next year.

Back at WWDC 2021, Apple said that iOS 15 and watchOS 8 would allow iPhone and Apple Watch owners to store digital hotel keys on their devices. While that feature didn’t quite make the release of those two updates, it’s now available at six Hyatt locations across the US. As you might expect, it allows you to store a digital version of your hotel keycard in Apple Wallet.

You can add the keycard at any point after you reserve a room. However, you’ll still need to check in at the front desk before you can use your iPhone or Apple Watch to enter your guestroom or any other restricted area within the hotel. The digital keycards support Apple Wallet’s Express Mode feature, which means you don’t need to authenticate your identity with Face ID or Touch ID every time you want to use the feature.

If at any point you decide to extend your stay or change rooms, the hotel can update your keycard without the need for you to visit the front desk. What’s more, if your device starts running low on battery life and enters Power Reserve mode, you can still use your iPhone or Apple Watch as a keycard for up to five hours.

The six locations where you can use your iPhone or Apple Watch to store a keycard are as follows: Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, Hyatt Centric Key West Resort and Spa, Hyatt House Chicago/West Loop-Fulton Market, Hyatt House Dallas/Richardson, Hyatt Place Fremont/Silicon Valley and Hyatt Regency Long Beach.

Hyatt says it expects to roll out the technology to all of its locations globally. Sometime next year, Apple also plans to allow iOS 15 and watchOS 8 to store government issued IDs from select states as well.

Many car brands are touting recycled parts in their vehicles, but Ford thinks it can claim some extra bragging rights. The badge claims the Bronco Sport is the first vehicle to use parts made entirely of recycled ocean plastic. Ford used plastic from the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean to make wireless harness clips in the SUV. They're as durable as previous petroleum-based clips, but require less energy to make and even cost 10 percent less.

The company has been using some degree of recycled plastic for over two decades, although it has been getting creative as of late. It recently started making F-250 fuel-line clips from 3D printer waste, and used water bottles for the underbody shields on the 2020 Escape.

This move could be an important step toward more sustainable car production. At the same time, it shows just how far Ford has to go. They're small parts in an SUV that's sold exclusively with a combustion engine inside — this would carry more weight if they were larger components in a hybrid or pure electric vehicle. Ford has vowed to further electrify its lineup and explore future uses of ocean plastic. Until that happens, though, this is more a hint of that future than a major milestone.