Hasta La Gadget!

Meta is once again settling a privacy complaint, but this one reaches back — way back. As Varietyreports, the company has agreed to pay $90 million to settle a 2012 class action lawsuit accusing the company of violating users’ privacy. Facebook allegedly overstepped its bounds in 2010 and 2011 by using tracking cookies that monitored browsing after users signed out, despite promises to the contrary.

The settlement is still pending approval in a Northern District of California court. Attorneys at DiCello Levitt Gutzler were confident, however, following a 2020 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that turned the case in their favor. Facebook needed consent for the data collection, the appeals court said, and unlawful use of personal data created “economic harm” even when the data’s value remained intact. Meta had succeeded three times in court before the 2020 opinion. The Supreme Court declined to hear Meta’s appeal of the Ninth Circuit ruling.

A Meta spokesperson emphasized the age of the case in a statement to Variety, saying it was in the company’s “best interest” to settle and “move past this issue.” This is the seventh largest privacy- or breach-related in the US, according to the law firm, with another Facebook case (a $650 million payout over facial recognition) topping the chart.

The settlement won’t materially affect your privacy when the issues are long in the past. You also shouldn’t expect a significant reward if you can make a claim — class actions like this rarely lead to windfalls for affected users, especially when Facebook has so many members. With that said, the outcome is a reminder that Facebook’s privacy issues have existed for a long time, and continue to this day.

The 3DS and Wii U shops’ days are numbers. In a new support page, Nintendo has revealed that it’s shutting down the eShops for the Wii U system and the 3DS family of consoles in late March 2023. That means after that date, you won’t be able to purchase any content from the shops anymore, download demos and redeem download codes. The shutdown process will start much earlier than March next year, though: You won’t be able to use a credit card to add funds to your eShop account starting on May 23rd, 2022. 

Further, while retailers will sell Nintendo eShop Card cards until supplies last, you can’t use them to add funds to your account anymore starting on August 29th, 2022. You can add as much funds as you want until those dates, however, and you can redeem download codes until late March 2023. After the eShops officially shut down, you can only use them to redownload any content you already own and to install software updates.

Nintendo wrote in the FAQ section of the page that the the move “is part of the natural lifecycle for any product line as it becomes less used by consumers over time.” Both systems are getting up there in years, and Nintendo stopped manufacturing the 3DS back in 2020. Meanwhile, the Switch has become Nintendo’s best-selling home console last year after selling a total of 103.54 million units since it launched in 2017. 

As Kotaku notes, Nintendo is also removing the only way to buy some classic games for older platforms by shutting down the shops. Apparently, the gaming giant deleted a section in its FAQ talking about how the Nintendo Switch Online “is an effective way to make classic content easily available to a broad range of players.” It added: “We currently have no plans to offer classic content in other ways.” Nintendo Switch Online is a subscription service, though, and you can only access its library of classic games as long as your membership is active. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 won’t hit theaters until April 8th, but a third movie is already in the works. Paramount confirmed that Sonic 3 is now in development, along with a Paramount+ streaming series based on Sonic sidekick Knuckles, starring Idris Elba. “We are delighted to announce that the third Sonic theatrical film and the first live action Sonic series for Paramount+ are being actively developed,” said Sega CEO Haruki Satomi in a tweet.

Sonic 2’s first trailer confirmed the existence of the titular character’s new sidekick Tails, voiced by Colleen O’Shaughnessy. We also saw the return of the first movie’s villain, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carry), who’s seeking to gain the Chaos Emeralds. Aiding his quest is none other than Knuckles the Echidna, who demonstrates his powers and posh Idris Elba voice. Elba will also voice Knuckles in the streaming series, set to arrive in 2023.

The first Sonic film was one of the most successful video game adaptations yet, making the launch of a sequel inevitable. Paramount must be pretty confident about that to have already announced Sonic 3 and a streaming series to boot. The trailer looked promising, but we’ll find out when it arrives on April 8th. 

Facebook’s “News Feed” is no more. After more than 15 years, the company is officially renaming its central feature, which will now be known simply as “Feed.” The company announced the name change in a tweet.

The change, which comes just months after Mark Zuckerberg announced he was renaming the company to Meta, is yet another sign Facebook is trying to shift the perception of its core products. In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the new moniker was meant “to better reflect the diverse content people see on their Feeds.” They added that the new name won’t change how the feature works in the app.

Still, the removal of “news” from the name will likely be seen as symbolic of the company’s changing priorities as it looks toward a future centered on the metaverse, not its social networking app. Facebook’s handling of news stories has long been a thorny issue for the company. Company executives have for years argued that news is only a “small percentage” of what people share on the platform, and the company completely reoriented its feed in 2018 to focus on Facebook friends rather than publishers. (That change came with its own unintended consequences, according to Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. ) 

More recently, Facebook has tried to counter perceptions that polarizing content, particularly from far-right personalities, dominates its Feed. The company has published reports on “widely viewed content,” that argue political content isn’t that popular. And in response to a widely cited Twitter account that ranks the top Facebook Pages using analytics data from CrowdTangle, the company has published its own take on which publishers have the biggest reach on the platform. Those questions have also been central to researchers’ fight to understand how content spreads on Facebook. Of course, a superficial name change doesn’t resolve any of those issues, but it could help Facebook further bolster its claims that the company is embarking on a new era that won’t be defined by the social networking app now seeing declining engagement.

Even after decades, scientists and researchers have yet to discover a cure for HIV. Treatment for HIV has indeed come a very long way to the point where those infected with HIV who are diligent with their medicine taking can actually bring the viral loads in their bodies down to undetectable levels.

Obviously, a cure would be ideal, but scientists are learning more each day. In fact, recently it has been reported that a woman in the US is now the third known person in the world to have entered into HIV remission, meaning that she’s no longer taking her medication but her viral loads are essentially undetectable.

What’s interesting is that this woman is of mixed race. This is an important distinction because the woman had previously received a leukemia diagnosis and chemotherapy had destroyed her blood cells. This required her to receive a stem cell transplant which was taken from a national repository that allowed researchers to identify blood that had a HIV-resistant mutation.

This mutation was previously associated with the two other cases of HIV remission, but it seems to be a mutation found in people of northern European descent, meaning that it limited the ability to transplant it into people who weren’t of that descent. This is why it was important to note that this woman was of mixed race.

However, before we get too excited, researchers have cautioned that this might not necessarily be the cure we are hoping for simply because it’s not necessarily an appropriate treatment for those who do not require the transplant. These types of transplants have been found to be fatal for about 20% of people, and could also cause other health problems.

Woman In US Becomes Third Person In The World To Go Into HIV Remission

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