Technology

Axios reports: Grindr is partnering with Spectrum Labs, tapping the startup’s AI-based system to help filter postings on the LGBTQ dating service. For years, Grindr has chosen not to implement an AI system for content moderation, not because it didn’t want to augment its keyword-based filtering system, but because it was concerned that the models weren’t sensitive enough to keep …

The Texas Tribune reports: Texas is planning to add enough electric vehicle charging stations throughout the state to support 1 million electric vehicles with dozens of new stations to allow for easier long-distance travel. The plan is to have charging stations every 50 miles along most non-business interstate routes. The chargers will be high-powered at 150kW, able to bring most …

Gallup reports: The percentage of U.S. adults saying they use their smartphone “too much” has increased markedly in recent years, rising from 39% when Gallup last asked this in 2015 to 58% today. This sentiment was strongly age-contingent in 2015 and remains so now; however, all age groups have become more likely to express this concern. Also, this belief is …

The Verge reports: In a Thursday letter addressed to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Sen. Ed Markey  — along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders — demanded that the department develop a strategy to require a common charging port across all mobile devices. The letter comes a week after European Union lawmakers reached a deal on new legislation forcing all …

Ars Technica reports: A tracking tool installed on many hospitals’ websites has been collecting patients’ sensitive health information—including details about their medical conditions, prescriptions, and doctor’s appointments—and sending it to Facebook. The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of …

Courthouse News reports: Apple will have to face claims the company profited off of criminal enterprise schemes featuring stolen gift cards after a federal judge declined to dismiss claims the company benefited monetarily from sophisticated schemes that employ fake apps to swindle consumers. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila dismissed some of the claims from a class of plaintiffs that said …

The New York Times reports: Over the course of 10 months, nearly 400 car crashes in the United States involved advanced driver-assistance technologies, the federal government’s top auto-safety regulator disclosed Wednesday, in its first-ever release of large-scale data about these burgeoning systems. In 392 incidents cataloged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from July 1 of last year through …

People Magazine reports: After first announcing the decision last year, Microsoft will shut down Internet Explorer on Wednesday. The move comes about 27 years after the company first debuted the browser. Starting Wednesday, most people who try to open the application will be directed to Microsoft Edge — the company’s newer browser. Although the browser is nowhere near as popular …

Changing America reports: A fleet of driverless box trucks will soon begin delivering paper goods such as Dixie cups and toilet paper to dozens of Sam’s Club stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, a significant stride toward making driverless technology a reality on U.S. roads. Autonomous vehicle startup Gatik on Tuesday announced a commercial partnership with Georgia Pacific, a manufacturer …

Gothamist reports: It may soon be easier to get your busted iPhone fixed. Under a bill passed by the state legislature, digital electronics manufacturers – such as Apple or Samsung – will be required to make repair instructions and parts available to both consumers and independent technicians. The “right to repair” legislation, which still needs to be signed into law …

The Associated Press reports: Axon, the company best known for developing the Taser, said Monday it was halting plans to develop a Taser-equipped drone after a majority of its ethics board resigned over the controversial project. Axon’s founder and CEO Rick Smith said the company’s announcement last week — which drew a rebuke from its artificial intelligence ethics board — …

The Christian Post reports: Earlier this month, nearly 500 people gathered online for the Metaverse Church Summit, which featured a host of Christians involved with ministry in the metaverse. One of them was Bill Willenbrock, a hospital chaplain who has been leading a Christian fellowship on VRChat for about three years. VRChat is a growing collection of more than 25,000 …

Axios reports: Walmart customers in six states will soon be able to have their orders delivered by drone in less than 30 minutes. This will be the first large-scale drone delivery operation in the United States. So far, drone deliveries have been available only in a few small towns, with customers selecting from a short list of items. Walmart’s DroneUp …

New York City’s Fox affiliate reports: The final New York City public pay telephone was being removed on Monday morning. It was on 7th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The city began removing payphones in 2015 and replacing them with public Wi-Fi hotspots. The city has removed thousands of payphones across all five boroughs in the past several years. In 2014, …

Engadget reports: Apple just marked the end to one of the most important product lines in its history. The company has discontinued the iPod touch, which will only be available in stores “while supplies last.” Not surprisingly, the company maintained that the “spirit of iPod” continues in other products, including the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. The move has been …

The Washington Post reports: Facebook said Monday that it’s opening its first physical retail space — its latest gambit to transform itself from a social media platform into a hardware giant inventing the “metaverse.” In the store, customers will be able to test out Facebook’s growing line of smart hardware devices including its virtual reality headset Quest 2, its smart …

The Verge reports: Twitter is experimenting with an “unmentioning” feature that will allow users to remove themselves from conversations. It’s limited to some users and only on the web version for now but looks like a very useful way to clean up your mentions. “We’re experimenting with Unmentioning—a way to help you protect your peace and remove yourself from conversations,” …

Elon Musk will surely take credit for this: It’s a feature that Twitter users have been requesting for so long that it’s become a meme, but now the mythical “edit button” is actually becoming a reality. Twitter has announced that it’s working to allow users to edit their tweets after posting them. The idea is that you’ll be able to …

Axios reports: A small Silicon Valley startup is announcing Wednesday that it is close to having a working prototype of a contact lens capable of showing basic information such as driving directions using only eye movements to control the display. While smart glasses are often touted as a fixture of our augmented-reality future, a handful of companies are taking things …

The Washington Post reports: Two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut landed in a remote area of Kazakhstan Wednesday after undocking from the International Space Station and flying back to Earth in a historic mission that came amid mounting tensions over the war in Ukraine. The Soyuz spacecraft touched down under a parachute right on time, at 7:28 a.m. Eastern, …