Charlotte Henry

Following a hit is always hard. Gamesmaker Niantic has found this after the mega-success of Pokémon Go. The company’s boss John Hanke told Bloomberg News on how it is trying to create the next big thing.

“We’re hard at work on our games pipeline with a multiyear product road map made up of games and other forms of AR experiences,” John Hanke, chief executive officer of the San Francisco-based studio, told a group of reporters last week. “We are extending the concept of what constitutes a Niantic game in a variety of ways,” he added, without elaborating. AR technology, which blends digital elements with real-world environments, is seen as one of the next big leaps in mobile tech and many firms are gearing up to seize the opportunity. That includes Apple Inc., which Bloomberg News has reported will build 3-D cameras into this year’s iPhone generation like it’s done for the latest iPad Pro. Formerly a part of Alphabet Inc.’s Google — which has its own AR ambitions — Niantic is in charge of the most popular AR app in history with Pokémon Go.

This weekend, the eighth episode of Lil Wayne’s Young Money Radio on Apple Music/Beats 1 Radio. In a short time, the show has become a huge hit. Two of the people who, alongside, Lil Wayne, brought Young Money Radio, to Beats 1 –  Apple Music exec Larry Jackson and the rapper’s manager, Mack Maine – told Variety how it all came about.

“We’re No. 1 in hip-hop,” Jackson boasts of Apple Music. “Artists like Wayne, Drake, Travis, Future, Post Malone, Kanye all do really well on the service.” To be sure: Drake’s “Scorpion” holds the biggest first-week streams tally of any album on Apple Music. In second place: Wayne’s “Carter V.” Adds Jackson: “It was a natural if I could work it out to get Wayne to deliver the show.” With Wayne manager Mack Maine, who also serves as president of Young Money, Jackson worked it out so the rapper and his crew could fly out to Los Angeles weekly to tape the show in Apple Music’s Culver City studios. Then COVID-19 hit and those plans were thwarted. Instead, Jackson set Wayne up to broadcast from his home base in Miami.

The Sony PlayStation 5 was unveiled on Thursday. There was a lot to unpack, but The Verge has a good breakdown of what came out of the event, including the console’s controversial design.

Obviously, the design is divisive. Equally obvious, Sony will have known it would be. As a fan of Sony’s outlandish gadgetry throughout the decades, I am glad that the PS5 looks more like the gleaming new wing of a Chinese airport terminal than a piece of AV equipment. I’m also glad that, unlike the Xbox Series X, it’ll actually fit into my TV stand horizontally. But taste is personal, as are living room setups, and it’s reasonable to be taken aback by Sony’s direction here. I’ll just note that game consoles stick around for a long time and even the weirdest usually end up feeling normal once they’ve been under your TV for a couple of years.

Zoom canceled, then reactivated, the account of a U.S.-based Chinese activist on Wednesday, Axios reported. It raises further concerns about how tech firms are being forced to engage in censorship to do business in the country.

Zoom has faced growing scrutiny over security concerns and its ties to China. Update: A Zoom spokesperson confirmed to Axios that the account had been closed “to comply with local law” and said it had now been re-activated. “Just like any global company, we must comply with applicable laws in the jurisdictions where we operate. When a meeting is held across different countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply with their respective local laws. We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law and continuously review and improve our process on these matters. We have reactivated the US-based account.” — Zoom statement. Between the lines: This suggests Zoom closed the account due to concerns in China, which forbids free discussion of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement.

Following in the footsteps of IBM, Amazon has banned police use of its facial recognition for the next 12 months. In a blog post published Wednesday, the company said that while groups that help reunite families with missing children and rescue human trafficking victims can still use its Rekognition software, there is a one-year moratorium on police usage.

We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge. We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.

Apple may use WWDC 2020 to unveil an iMac inspired by the iPad Pro, according to tipster Sonny Dickson. Cult of Mac reported that this could mean thinner bezel.

The new all-in-one is expected to feature significantly slimmer bezels like Pro Display XDR, plus AMD Navi graphics. It has been almost eight years since the iMac got its last redesign, and despite still being a pretty machine, it is starting to look a little long in the tooth today. It’s understandable that many Apple fans want something new. Recent rumors have hinted at a significant iMac refresh — complete with a new design — will come this year. Now tipster Sonny Dickson, who has been accurate in the past, has some new tidbits to share. Dickson says the new iMac will use “iPad Pro design language, with Pro Display like bezels.” He doesn’t go into detail, but this suggests a return to sharper edges, a thinner form factor, and an almost edge-to-edge screen.

The Ireland subreddit is to close every night at midnight local time in an attempt to stop a deluge of racist posts. BBC News reported that it plans to add moderators and filters as a longterm solution.

Moderators said having to check every comment on the social network’s forums had pushed them to “breaking point”.vThe page is now seeking to expand its team of moderators and add filters that can spot posts “hateful” comments.vIn a post on the page, which has 280,000 members, it said: “We’re taking the very difficult decision today to shut down Reddit Ireland temporarily between midnight and 08:00 each day in order to stem the flow of racist/extremist content which is being posted at these times.”