Bytes: What’s new in tech

Using phones for contact tracing

Apple and Google are teaming up on a new tool to track the spread of Covid-19, said Tony Romm in The Washington Post. The two tech giants said last week that they are collaborating on a contact-tracing system that uses Bluetooth to “broadcast a unique signal every few minutes to other devices” as close as within 6 feet. The information would be available, on an opt-in basis, to developers of public health apps. People who learned they’d contracted the virus “could indicate that on their app—and people whose smartphones had been in the vicinity would be notified.” Because Bluetooth can be disabled by users, unlike cell tower location data, the technique should mitigate some of the concerns from privacy advocates.

Drones enforce social distancing

“At least two American police departments are deploying drones to tell people to stay home,” said Adam Raymond in NYMag.com. Last week, the mayor of Elizabeth, N.J., Chris Bollwage, said drones will fly around the city broadcasting an automated message threatening $1,000 fines for social-distancing rules violations—using a recording of the mayor’s own voice. In Daytona Beach, Fla., the police department’s drones have a slightly friendlier tone, asking people to “please adhere to social-distancing guidelines.” Airborne enforcement started in China in January, when a viral video showed “people who’d wandered outside in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak getting scolded by a disembodied voice from a drone flying overhead.”

Google must pay French publishers

A French antitrust regulator ruled last week that Google has to pay publishers for the news extracts it shows on its search pages, said Steve Dent in Engadget.com. The search giant threatened to “remove snippets altogether” last year after Europe passed a law forcing Google to pay for what it displayed of copyrighted material. Most news publishers, who rely on Google’s search engine for traffic, agreed to keep letting the snippets appear “without any remuneration from Google.” French authorities said that those one-sided deals were an abuse of Google’s market power as the overwhelmingly dominant search engine. Google must now negotiate with publishers over payments retroactive to October 2019. Google reportedly has been

“in talks with publishers to pay for content via a possible subscription service similar to Apple News+.”