Boycott Wordle – New York Times workers plead, DNA firm disappears without trace
‘Don’t play Wordle’ is the plea from striking New York Times workers who are complaining about what they say are unfair labour practices. The New York Times Tech Guild, which works on things like election content and recipes alongside the newspaper and website’s popular array of puzzles, began industrial action earlier this week. The union said it gave management “months of notice” but that ultimately, “the company has decided that our members aren’t worth enough to agree to a fair contract and stop committing unfair labour practices”. Sky News
A DNA-testing firm appears to have ceased trading – without telling its customers what has happened to the highly sensitive data they shared with it. Atlas Biomed, which has offices in London, offered to provide insights into people’s genetic make up as well as their predisposition to certain illnesses. However, users are no longer able to access their personalised reports online and the company has not responded to the BBC’s requests for comment. Customers of the firm describe the situation as “very alarming” and say they want answers about what has happened to their “most personal information”. BBC
When Donald Trump enters the White House in January, there is one government official who his supporters in Silicon Valley would most like to see ousted: Lina Khan. As chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the 35-year-old competition tsar has pursued a crackdown against some of America’s largest tech giants, including the likes of Amazon and Google. The nature of this regulatory crusade has inevitably put her on a collision course with Trump’s biggest tech supporters, Elon Musk included, who have urged the president-elect to fire Khan at the first opportunity. Telegraph
Elwood Edwards, who voiced AOL’s “You’ve got mail” greeting, has died, aged 74. Edwards died on Tuesday at his home in New Bern, North Carolina, his daughter Heather said. The cause was complications from a stroke late last year, she added. Edwards taped his AOL greeting on a recorder while sitting in the living room of his home in 1989. “You’ve got mail” became a catchphrase in the late 1990s and served as the title of the 1998 film starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. “He would still blush any time someone brought it up,” his daughter said. “He loved the attention, but he never got used to it.” The Guardian
Sony says that despite the “different comments” on the PS5 Pro’s chunky price point, the “pricing […] has not had a negative impact” on sales. As spotted by Genki_JPN, Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki said the system was “targeted” at “hardcore users”, not casual players. “Hardcore users are the target of this hardware,” Totoki said. “In terms of the pricing, many people made different comments on that, but pricing on PS5 Pro has not had a negative impact, I don’t think.” Eurogamer
For a long time, the entry-level MacBook Pro has felt like a weird in-betweener, with the processor of a MacBook Air, the body of a MacBook Pro, and some features stripped away. Last year’s 14-inch MacBook Pro was a step in the right direction, finally shedding the Touch Bar and upgrading the machine to be much closer to the other Pros. But it still followed the same formula: its processor was worse, its base RAM was lower, and it had one port fewer. With the M4, Apple finally has a base MacBook Pro that’s less of a parts-bin compromise and more of an actual Pro machine. The Verge
