Bytes: What’s new in tech
Facebook’s push to counter TikTok
Facebook is overhauling its Home feed, said Naomi Nix in The Washington Post. The social media giant last week officially announced long-rumored plans to split up its main “home” section into two tabs. “The default screen, known as Home, will now display more entertaining posts from outside creators and provide easy access” to its two short-form video services, Reels and Stories. Those who want to see posts from friends, family, and groups will have to navigate to a different tab, Feeds. The redesign is part of an aggressive effort to bolster “video products to compete for young users against ByteDance’s TikTok.” That’s an increasingly urgent mission for Facebook, which in the last months of 2021 lost users for the first time in its 18-year history.
New details on DHS data collection
The Department of Homeland Security has “used mobile location data to track people’s movements on a larger scale than previously known,” said Alfred Ng in Politico. According to records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, DHS routinely harvested data from 2017 to 2019 via a Virginia-based company called Venntel, which pays app developers to include code snippets in mobile apps that transmit location data. The agency scooped up more than 113,000 location data points in just three days. Venntel marketed its capabilities to federal immigration enforcement agencies by showing how its location data could track devices down to the details of “a specific vehicle’s route.” The revelation elicited outrage from civil libertarians. “No one who downloads an app thinks they are giving permission to waive their 4th Amendment rights and let the government follow their every move,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Tech tools to help with hearing loss
Smartphones have come a long way with features that can help you cope with hearing loss, said Simon Hill in Wired. In fact many of us, not just those with “profound” hearing loss, can benefit from these innovations. Google introduced Live Caption in 2019, which “automatically captions videos and spoken audio on your device in real time without a Wi-Fi or cellular connection.” Apple has added a “Conversation Boost” feature to its AirPods Pro earbuds that can “amplify voices during in-person chats.” The iPhone also has a feature called Sound Recognition that uses LED flashes to alert you to sounds such as a smoke alarm, a doorbell, or a baby crying.