Latvia is to release a COVID-19 Contact Tracing app based on the framework recently released by Apple and Google, Reuters reported. It will become one of the first nations to do so.

Early success of tracing apps in countries like Singapore and Australia has been patchy because Apple’s iPhone does not support their approach to using Bluetooth short-range radio as a proxy for measuring the risk of infection. Latvia’s Apturi Covid (Stop Covid) app is, by contrast, based on technology launched last week by Apple and Google, whose iOS and Android operating systems run 99% of the world’s smartphones. “The developers believe that reliance on this standard will ensure widespread adoption and also compatibility over time with contact tracing apps around the world that are also expected to adopt the same exposure notification framework,” the app’s developers said in a statement.

Google Chrome recently announced a variety of new privacy features will be added when the latest version is released. These include real-time threat checking and password checking. Wired has a good rundown of what users of the popular browser can expect in the near future.

Chrome’s new Enhanced Safe Browsing mode will attempt to play catchup. If you turn the feature on the address of websites you’re visiting will be shared with Google in real-time and the company will compare it to its blocklist of unsafe sites. This builds on its existing Safe Browsing mode. “Chrome checks the URL of each site you visit or file you download against a local list, which is updated approximately every 30 minutes,” Google explains in a blog post about the new setting. “Increasingly, some sophisticated phishing sites slip through that 30-minute refresh window by switching domains very quickly.”

Just when you thought it was safe to start typing again…. the Butterfly Keyboard could be on its way back. That’s according to one Apple leaker, whose claims Cult of Mac reported on.

Despite it vanishing from Apple’s MacBook line, Apple hasn’t given up on its controversial (read: hated) butterfly keyboard design, claims Apple leaker L0vetodream. In a Friday tweet, L0vetodream said that Apple is “trying to improve on the structure, and solve the [issues]” faced by users. Should it manage to do so, “we might see it comes back again in future”… L0vetodream’s tweet suggests that, fundamentally, Apple still thinks the idea is a solid one. The company never came out and said that the butterfly keyboard had been a disaster; it only moved forward with new models without it. This is, of course, only a rumor. L0vetodream does not cite their sources when it comes to this rumor. But they have reported a number of previous Apple rumors — and had some of their messages supported by Apple leaker-of-the-moment Jon Prosser.

Spotify became the latest company to tell employees they can work from home until 2021, Music Business Worldwide reported. It joins other major tech firms in taking such a decision.

MBW understands that a memo went out earlier today (May 21) explaining that SPOT is following local guidelines on the re-opening of its offices during the current pandemic, and will be taking a “phased approach” on the matter. As part of this strategy, the company has informed its employees that they can individually decide with “full discretion” whether or not to return to company workspaces before next year. According to its latest annual fiscal report, Spotify employed 4,405 people on a full-time basis worldwide in 2019, with 2,121 in the United States and 1,437 in Sweden.