Hasta La Gadget!

Apple will expand benefits for all of its retail employees in the US, beginning April 4th. Bloomberg reports the new benefits include increased vacation and sick days, paid parental leave and more. It will impact both full-time and part-time employees across all 270 Apple Stores nationwide.

The tech giant’s offer of more generous benefits didn’t come out of the blue. Apple, like many corporations, is having a tough time recruiting and retaining hourly workers in a tight labor market. A number of media outlets, including The Verge, Gizmodo, 9to5Mac and others have reported on the grim realities of Apple’s retail operations, which include low pay, stressful workloads and low employee morale. Staffing shortages due to Covid-19 led to many stores operating on reduced hours or closing altogether. Dozens of Apple employees staged a Christmas Eve walkout in order to protest their working conditions. The testimony of these workers presents a stark contrast to Apple’s financial standing during the pandemic, which has produced several consecutive record-breaking quarters.

Apple will double the number of paid sick days for both full-time and part-time employees. Full-time retail employees will receive 12 sick days instead of six. The company will also be more lenient in granting sick leave, allowing workers to use sick leave for mental health days or in order to take family members to the doctor. Part-time workers will also receive paid vacation days and paid parental leave for up to six weeks.

The company’s benefits expansion follows similar moves by Amazon, Walmart and Fedex to retain hourly and front-line employees. Thousands of frontline workers have since quit or retired due to stressful and dangerous working conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic. But labor rights advocates point out that many of these improvements, such as bonuses or hazard pay, are either temporary or have since been rolled back.

With the 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year in the books, it’s time to let the public choose the top nature images from the past year. The contest, produced by the Natural History Museum, London, saw over 50,000 photos entered from 95 countries. For the People’s Choice award, the public was asked to vote on a…

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The next PlayStation 4 and PS5 system update will add a handful of new accessibility and quality of life features to Sony’s consoles. Among the additions is support for voice commands on PlayStation 5. Sony’s previous-generation console has had that feature since launching in 2013, but it’s now making its way to the company’s latest console too.

Starting with a beta Sony will make available to English-speaking users in the US and UK first, the company is adding a system option that will make the console respond to “Hey PlayStation.” It’s a feature you can turn off, but leaving it on will allow you to use your voice to launch games and other apps, as well as open the system menu and control media playback. The update will bring other new accessibility features, including one that makes headphones output mono sound. Sony notes that’s something that should be particularly helpful to players with unilateral hearing loss.

As part of the same update, Sony is also tweaking how group chats work. Moving forward, they’ll be known as parties, and you’ll have the option to decide whether they’re private or open to the public. Should you leave your party open, not only can your friends join without an invite, but so can their friends as well.

Another new PS5 feature will allow you to filter your games by genre, as well as keep up to five of them to your console’s home screen for quick access. Sony has also updated the design of trophy cards and added support for more screen reader languages, among other changes.

You can help Sony beta test the update by signing up to do so on the company’s website. Look for an email in your inbox on Wednesday to find out if you’ve been selected to take part. Sony will release both PlayStation 4 and PS5 system updates later this year.

In a new case report this week, medical professionals in California say that at least two of their patients have experienced substantial and rapid relief from their long covid symptoms with the help of over-the-counter antihistamines. Importantly, the findings are only anecdotal at this point, but they may point to…

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In a major turn of events, embattled identity verification company ID.me says it will make facial recognition verification optional for all of its public sector government partners. Additionally, starting March 1, the company says all ID.me users will be able to delete their face scans.

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