Activision Blizzard found to have withheld raises from unionizing Raven Software workers

After investigating an unfair labor practice charge against Activision Blizzard, the National Labor Relations Board found that the company withheld raises from quality assurance workers at Call of Duty support studio Raven Software. The agency attributed this withholding to the workers’ union activity.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) filed a complaint on behalf of the workers in June. It accused Activision Blizzard of retaliating against those who were attempting to unionize in a number of ways, including by laying some off and dismantling the studio’s QA department by moving workers to separate teams. The CWA also said that Activision Blizzard leadership solicited grievances, which the NLRB concurred with. The agency is still looking into some aspects of the original complaint, as The Washington Post notes.

The CWA filed an amended version of the complaint on Monday. It claimed that Activision Blizzard is continuing to violate labor laws by keeping QA workers at the studio separated without their own department.

In April, Activision Blizzard gave 1,100 QA testers full-time jobs and higher base pay. However, it said QA workers at Raven were not eligible for pay bumps “due to legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act.” At the time, Raven QA workers were working toward a union election. They voted to unionize in May. Contract negotiations between Activision Blizzard and the Game Workers Alliance (the Raven QA workers’ union) are ongoing.

“Despite their best efforts, Activision’s constant attempts to undermine its workers’ and impede our union election have failed,” CWA and the Game Workers Alliance told Engadget in a statement. “We’re glad the NLRB recognized that Activision acted illegally when they unequally enforced policies by withholding company-wide benefits and wage increase from Raven workers for organizing. We want the company to bargain a fair contract in good faith and to move past all of the cheap — and illegal — tricks they tried to pull to prevent us from forming our union.”

“Due to legal obligations under the [National Labor Relations Act] requiring employers not to grant wage increases while an election was pending, we could not institute new pay initiatives at Raven because they would be brand new kinds of compensation changes, which had not been planned beforehand,” Activision Blizzard spokesperson Rich George told The Washington Post. “This rule that employers should not grant these kinds of wage increases has been the law for many years.”

Gatorade’s smart water bottle uses sweatiness to gauge when you need to hydrate

Gatorade has designed a smart water bottle to help you determine and maintain your baseline hydration level and monitor your post-workout recovery. A ring of LEDs that runs around the Smart Gx Bottle’s cap should allow you to monitor you daily hydration, and gently nudge you to drink more when necessary. You can recharge the bottle using a USB cable. A Gatorade spokesperson told Engadget the bottle is dishwasher safe, but the cap is not. 

Naturally, your hydration levels can be tracked through Gatorade’s iOS-only Gx App, which features nutrition and training programs as well as recovery recommendations. As for what happens when you drink water from another source and how the app will track that, Gatorade says that’s “on the roadmap for launch.”

A person holds the Gatorade Smart Gx Bottle, which has a cap with lights around the edge. In their other hand, they're holding a smartphone that displays the Gx App with text reading Smart Gx Bottle.
Gatorade

Meanwhile, Gatorade’s Sweat Patch, which the company debuted last year, is a single-use wearable that can help you create a “sweat profile” in the app and help track your perspiration. You’ll need to use the Sweat Patch to get a hydration report for the Smart Gx Bottle. Alternatively, you can weigh yourself before and after your workout.

To that end, Gatorade sells pods that can be mixed with water to help replenish electrolytes and carbohydrates. They’re compatible with the Smart Gx Bottle and regular Gx Bottle, each of which has a piercing mechanism for the pods. In addition, the company offering gummies that it claims can help with recovery and boosting your immune system.

Smart water bottles that can track hydration levels have been aroundfor years, but Gatorade is stepping into the space as a well-known brand. Folks might be more inclined to try one out from a company whose products they’ve used for years than one that started life as a crowdfunding project.

Engadget Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low has been checking out the Smart Gx Bottle using pre-release software. We’ll need to test it out a bit longer to determine how effective it is in tracking hydration levels. It’s similar to Gatorade’s other bottles in terms of squeezability. However, Cherlynn found that the cap leaks, which isn’t a great look. Also, in case you’re wondering, Cherlynn says the recovery gummies taste better than expected.

The Smart Gx Bottle is available from Gatorade’s website starting today. It costs $70. Gatorade will toss in a Sweat Patch and a pack of four pods of your choice at no extra cost. In case you’re interested in the gummies, those will run you $26 for one batch or $46.80 for a bundle.

Twitter finally starts rolling out the edit button, but US users will have to wait

After years of users begging Twitter for an edit button, they’re finally getting their wish. The company is rolling out the long-awaited feature in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but only for Twitter Blue subscribers. The option isn’t available in the US just yet, but Twitter says users there will get access soon. It plans to offer the feature in other markets too.

Twitter Blue subscribers who send a tweet and realize they made a typo or two will have 30 minutes to make edits. They can make changes up to five times during that time frame. For the sake of transparency, edited tweets have a modified timestamp that reads “last edited” and the time of the last change. Click the timestamp and you’ll see the entire edit history.

Twitter said in April that it was at long last starting to test an edit button. There were indications early on that the feature could include an edit history screen. At the beginning of September, Twitter said that it had, in fact, created an edit button. It published a test tweet at the end of the month and, a few days later, the edit button is going out into the wild.

The company is still technically testing the feature — it’ll be available as part of the Labs section of the $5 per month Twitter Blue service. Moreover, you can only edit original tweets and quote tweets, according to a support page. Many types of tweets cannot be edited, such as threads, replies, retweets, pinned tweets, Super Follow tweets and ones you draft on third-party apps.

Still, it’s a start. Twitter’s approach to the edit button makes sense in terms of keeping things as transparent as possible. It’s easy to imagine news organizations making changes to a breaking news tweet that’s going viral as clarifications or more details come in. Maybe if Twitter opens up the edit button to everyone, they’ll be able to fix innocuous typos like “sneak peak” without too much strife.

A data-sharing agreement between the US and UK is now in effect

As of today, a data-sharing pact between the US and the UK is in effect, five years after it was first floated. The two sides claim that the Data Access Agreement, which was authorized by the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act in the US, will help law enforcement to combat serious crimes in both countries. The Department of Justice called the initiative the first of its kind, adding that it would enable investigators “to gain better access to vital data” to fight serious crimes in a manner that’s “consistent with privacy and civil liberties standards.”

Under the agreement, authorities in one country can request data from ISPs in the other country, as long as it’s related to preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting serious crimes including terrorism, transnational organized crime and child exploitation. US officials can’t submit data requests targeting people in the UK and vice-versa — presumably the requests can either be used to assist domestic investigations or investigations into foreign nationals. Authorities also need to adhere to certain requirements, limitations and conditions when they access and use data.

The UK Home Office’s Investigatory Powers Unit will oversee the Data Access Agreement in the UK, while the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs (OIA) will handle matters in the US. The OIA has put together a CLOUD team that will review and certify orders on behalf of federal, state, local and territorial authorities. It will directly submit orders to ISPs in the UK and ensure data is transferred to authorities who requested it.

Privacy advocates have blasted the initiative and the CLOUD Act. In 2018, just after the bill was introduced, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it “creates a dangerous precedent for other countries who may want to access information stored outside their own borders, including data stored in the United States.” Fight for the Future argued that it would threaten user privacy.

The US is looking to forge pacts with other countries under the CLOUD Act. It signed a deal with Australia last December and entered negotiations with Canada earlier this year.

There’s an apparent PS5 jailbreak, but only for old firmware

Almost two years after the PlayStation 5 went on sale, it seems that modders have found a way to jailbreak the console, albeit with some significant limitations. As IGN notes, a modder known as SpecterDev revealed the apparent jailbreak, which is described as an experimental IPV6 kernel exploit that takes advantage of a WebKit vulnerability.

It appears the jailbreak will only work on PS5 systems that run firmware version 4.03 or earlier. If you have updated your PS5 since last October, you’re probably not going to be able to try the exploit. Even then, it seems that trying to install the jailbreak only works around a third of the time.

As for what you can actually do with a jailbroken PS5 right now, you’ll gain access to the system’s debug menu. You might be able to install games from outside of the PlayStation Store as well, but it’s not possible to run sideloaded software. 

Modder Lance McDonald tried the jailbreak and was able to install the PS4 demo P.T., Hideo Kojima’s famed, delisted teaser for the canceled Silent Hills. (PS4 units with P.T. installed often pop up on eBay.) However, McDonald wasn’t able to start playing the game. While the exploit offers read/write access to the PS5, there’s currently no way to execute sideloaded files. P.T. isn’t backward compatible on PS5 in any case.

As it stands, it doesn’t seem likely that this jailbreak will be in widespread use anytime soon, due to its limitations and the fact that Sony could ban modders’ accounts. On top of that, there’s the risk of bricking the console at a time when it still isn’t super easy to buy one. Still, this could give other hackers and modders a foundation on which to build more robust jailbreaking tools.

Kim Kardashian will pay $1.26 million to settle SEC charges over a crypto post

Kim Kardashian will pay $1.26 million to settle charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission over a cryptocurrency ad she posted on Instagram Stories. The socialite and reality TV megastar received $250,000 to post about EthereumMax’s EMAX tokens but didn’t disclose that she was paid to do so, according to the agency. 

The SEC determined that Kardashian violated the anti-touting provision of federal securities laws. She didn’t admit or deny the charges, though agreed to pay a $1 million penalty and around $260,000 in disgorgement, which the SEC said covers the fee she received for the ad plus prejudgement interest. In addition, Kardashian pledged not to promote cryptocurrency assets for three years.

“This case is a reminder that, when celebrities or influencers endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, it doesn’t mean that those investment products are right for all investors,” SEC chair Gary Gensler said. “We encourage investors to consider an investment’s potential risks and opportunities in light of their own financial goals.”

Earlier this year, a class-action suit took aim at Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather for promoting EthereumMax tokens. It accused the defendants of participating in a pump and dump scheme, in which investors promote an asset and sell their interest in it after the value rises. The suit claimed the value of the token soared by 632 percent after Mayweather and former NBA player Paul Pierce (another defendant in the case) promoted it.

According to a survey, 19 percent of people who heard about an Instagram Story from Kardashian that mentioned the cryptocurrency invested in EthereumMax. The lawsuit asserts that the value of the token nosedived by 98 percent the day after Kardashian’s post.

This is far from the first time that Kardashian has been accused of publishing sponsored posts without disclosing that they’re ads. Federal Trade Commission guidelines suggest that those who are paid to endorse something on social media should include the #Ad hashtag or include terms like “Sponsored,” “Promotion” or “Paid ad.”

In an incredible case of serendipity, a new podcast narrated by Kardashian, who is studying to become a lawyer, premiered on Spotify on Monday. The System: The Case of Kevin Keith is a true-crime podcast.

Coinbase users were unable to withdraw funds to US bank accounts for six hours

Coinbase users were unable to carry out US bank account transactions for around six hours on Sunday. An issue with the Automated Clearing House Network, which is used for electronic transfers between bank accounts in the country, emerged just before 7AM ET. The company said on its status page that it identified the problem, described as a “major outage,” by 8:23AM and resolved it by 12:41PM.

During the outage, users were still able to buy cryptocurrency with a debit card or PayPal account, as Decrypt noted. However, they weren’t able to make withdrawals to a US bank account.

“We’ve fully resolved this issue and ACH transfers are now processing. We apologize for the inconvenience,” Coinbase wrote on Twitter. The company said users’ funds were safe during the outage (at least if you don’t factor in the volatility of the crypto market).

As Web3 is Going Great points out, Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US. It’s in seventh place worldwide in terms of trading volume, per CoinCecko. At the time of writing, Coinbase users had traded $572 million over the previous 24 hours.

Tesla built 365,923 electric vehicles in Q3, up 42 percent from Q2

After pandemic-related disruptions in Q2, Tesla ramped up its manufacturing capacity again last quarter, leading the company to make a record number of deliveries between July 1st and September 30th. The company built 365,923 electric vehicles during the period. That marks a year over-year production increase of nearly 54 percent, as Tesla manufactured 237,823 cars in Q3 2021. Production was also up by 41.5 percent from Q2 2022, when the automaker built 258,580 vehicles.

The company produced 19,935 Model S and Model X cars in Q3 and delivered 18,672. For the Model 3 and Model Y, those figures were 345,988 and 345,988, respectively. In total, Tesla says it was able to deliver 343,830 vehicles in Q3, the most it has delivered in any quarter to date. However, that was below expectations, according to Reuters. On average, analysts anticipated that Tesla would deliver 359,162 EVs during the quarter.

Tesla built around 20,000 more vehicles that it was able to deliver during Q3. “As our production volumes continue to grow, it is becoming increasingly challenging to secure vehicle transportation capacity and at a reasonable cost during these peak logistics weeks,” Tesla said in a statement.

CEO Elon Musk noted last year that Tesla sees a significant increase in deliveries at the end of every quarter. That’s because the Shanghai Gigafactory, which recently built its 1 millionth car, manufactures EVs bound for Europe and other countries in the first half of each quarter, “then cars for far away parts of China, then cars for nearby parts of China,” Musk said.

“In Q3, we began transitioning to a more even regional mix of vehicle builds each week, which led to an increase in cars in transit at the end of the quarter,” Tesla said. “These cars have been ordered and will be delivered to customers upon arrival at their destination.”

The number of cars Tesla manufactured and delivered dropped dramatically in Q2 2022. It was forced to suspend work at the Shanghai factory in March due to a COVID-19 outbreak in China. Production at the plant has resumed, while recently opened Gigafactories in Berlin and Texas have helped the company significantly improve its manufacturing numbers. We’ll learn more about what the uptick in production and deliveries means for Tesla’s bottom line when the company announces its Q3 financial results on October 19th.

Leaked Pixel Watch images show band designs, watch faces and Fitbit integration

It’s only a few days until Google’s big Pixel event, where the company will show off the Pixel 7 lineup as well as the first flagship smartwatch it designed in-house (outside of Fitbit, anyway). Leaks and rumors have provided some hints about the Pixel Watch‘s features and specs. The latest leak might be the biggest one to date. It seems an Amazon listing for the Pixel Watch went live early in Germany — the Pixel Watch is set to go on sale just after Google’s October 6th event.

Images and details shared by leaker OnLeaks on the Slashleaks forum (as spotted by 9to5 Google) indicate there will be at least four band designs in a number of colors. They appear to include a silicon design in black, gray, eggshell white and green and silver (the images aren’t super high-res), as well as a braided one that comes in orange, green and black. It seems there are two leather designs as well.

Leaked image of Google's Pixel Watch showing some of the watch faces and band designs.
@OnLeaks via SlashLeaks

Beyond that, the images offer a look at some of the Pixel Watch faces. These include an analog-style watch face that includes the wearer’s heart rate, ones with artistic landscape designs and another that spells out the time in words. Other images offer peeks at the Pixel Watch’s Fitbit integration, a step counter, electrocardiogram (ECG) readings, an emergency call function and Fast Pair support.

Leaked image of Google's Pixel Watch showing some of the watch faces.
@OnLeaks via SlashLeaks

In addition, the Amazon listing, which has since been removed, suggested that users will receive six months of free Fitbit Premium access. Fitbit typically gives buyers of its smartwatches the same perk, but it’s not yet clear whether Google will do the same with the Pixel Watch in all regions. The listing also indicated that the Pixel Watch will connect to the Google Home app, and have 5ATM water resistance and a Corning Gorilla Glass display. The device is also said to have an Exynos 9110 processor and a day-long battery life.

Screenshots of the listing indicate that a WiFi version of the Pixel Watch costs €356.79 (around $349) in Germany. Previous reports suggested the WiFi model would start at $350 in the US, while the cellular version may start at $400. In any case, we’ll get more official details about the smartwatch this Thursday. We’ll have full coverage of the Pixel event, including everything you need to know about the Pixel Watch and the Pixel 7 lineup.

Google reportedly canceled a Stadia-exclusive follow-up to ‘Death Stranding’

One of the major problems that worked against Stadia from the jump was the fact that Google didn’t secure blockbuster exclusives for the cloud gaming service, which it will shut down in January. Sure, people were able to play the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2,Cyberpunk 2077 and Destiny 2 on the platform, but those are all available elsewhere. As it turns out, Google may have spurned the chance to have an exclusive title from one of the biggest names in gaming.

According to 9to5 Google, at one point Hideo Kojima was working on a Stadia-only follow-up to Death Stranding, which debuted on PlayStation in 2019 and later arrived on PC. Death Stranding has some asynchronous multiplayer elements. Other players might be able to use ladders, roads and other items that you place in the world, for instance. However, the planned follow-up was said to be a fully single-player game, which might have been the reason why Google canceled the project.

According to the report, Google canned the game, which was described as an episodic horror title, after seeing the first mockups in 2020. Stadia vice-president and general manager Phil Harrison is said to have made the final decision to kill the project. For what it’s worth, in a May 2020 interview, Kojima claimed one of his projects had recently been canceled. 

Google vice president and general manager Phil Harrison speaks during a Google keynote address announcing a new video gaming streaming service named Stadia that attempts to capitalize on the company's cloud technology and global network of data centers, at the Gaming Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
Stephen Lam / reuters

Google reportedly abandoned the project in the belief that there wasn’t a market for single-player games anymore. Of note, CD Projekt Red just announced that Cyberpunk 2077 (which, again, was released on Stadia) has now sold 20 million copies, less than two years after its eventfuldebut. By mid-2021, Death Stranding itself had sold more than 5 million copies.

The lack of big exclusives is far from the only issue that led to Stadia’s downfall. A questionable business model and a seemingly rushed rollout didn’t help, and nor did Google’s reputation for ruthlessly killing off its own products. Even though Stadia has excellent game streaming tech and some passionate fans, it never took off as Google hoped. The company will shut down the platform on January 18th and issue refunds for all hardware and software purchases (except for Pro subscriptions). Ubisoft is working on a way to give people who bought its games on Stadia access to PC versions.

The news of Stadia’s demise blindsided developers, from giants like Destiny 2 studio Bungie to indie studios whose titles were supposed to hit the now-closed Stadia store in the coming weeks. As Axios notes, it isn’t clear whether Google has a broad plan to reimburse studios for costs they expected to recoup after launching their games on Stadia. There are concerns about what Stadia’s closure means for game preservation too. While Google didn’t secure AAA exclusives, Stadia has some indie games that aren’t available elsewhere.

Detail of hands holding a Google Stadia video game controller, taken on November 27, 2019. (Photo by Olly Curtis/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Future Publishing via Getty Images

Meanwhile, some are calling on Google to unlock the Stadia Controller’s Bluetooth functions. The argument is that, if people can more easily use the controller on other platforms, it’s less likely that the gamepad will become e-waste. The controller connects directly to WiFi for Stadia games in order to minimize lag. You can also hook it up to devices with a USB-C cable.

As for Kojima, he has a Death Stranding sequel in the works, according to the game’s star, Norman Reedus. It also emerged in June that Kojima has teamed up with Xbox Game Studios for his next title. That game will be powered by Microsoft’s cloud technology.