Follow-up data from a Phase III trial is the latest to suggest that MDMA—also known as ecstasy—could improve mental health when combined with therapy. The study found that MDMA-assisted therapy was better than talk therapy alone in relieving the symptoms of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that this…
“Doctors and nurses here, we worry, we cry, but none of us will give up,” said “Dr. Iryna.”
The US Department of Justice has accused Google of training its employees on how to shield business communications from discovery in cases of legal disputes “by using false requests for legal advice.” As Axios reports, the DOJ has told the judge overseeing its antitrust case against the tech giant that Google instructs employees to add in-house lawyers to written communication, apply attorney-client privilege labels to them and make a request for legal advice even when it’s not needed. The department is now asking the judge to sanction the company “for its extensive and intentional efforts to misuse the attorney-client privilege to hide business documents relevant” to the case.
In the brief (PDF) its lawyers wrote for the judge, the DOJ said Google refers to the practice as “Communicate with Care” and that it first started no later than 2015. New employees are reportedly directed to follow the practice without discussion on whether it should only be used when legal advice is truly needed. In addition, Google allegedly provided the same training to teams handling search-distribution for the department’s (and other authorities’) antitrust cases.
Google specifically told those teams to follow the practice for any written communication containing revenue-sharing agreements and mobile application distribution agreements, based on the presentation slides the DOJ included in its brief. Those agreements are central to the case. If you’ll recall, the DOJ accused Google of having an unfair monopoly over search and search-related advertising in its 2020 antitrust lawsuit. It also questioned its terms for Android device manufacturers that force them to pre-load Google apps and set Google as the default search engine.
According to the DOJ, statements such as “adding legal” or “adding [attorney] for legal advice” appear in thousands of Google documents. These emails apparently lacked any specific request for advice and attorneys rarely respond to them. In the brief, the department said the practice “pervades the entire company” and is being used even by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.
The DOJ is now asking the court to hold Google’s conduct as sanctionable and to order it to immediately produce “all withheld or redacted emails where no attorney responded to the purported request for legal advice.”
Google spokesperson Julie Tarallo McAlister defended the company in a statement sent to Axios, however, calling the allegations “flatly wrong.” McAlister said:
“Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation, and suggestions to the contrary are flatly wrong. Just like other American companies, we educate our employees about legal privilege and when to seek legal advice. And we have produced over four million documents to the DOJ in this case alone — including many that employees had considered potentially privileged.”
“He started essentially apologizing for Vladimir Putin, which he does almost every night on his show,” said Linda Chavez.
Lucid Motors had a plan: Instead of taking on Tesla, it was determined to shoot past the EV-only automaker with its vehicles and instead, go after Germany. More specifically, the German luxury sedan. With a combination of power, range and opulence, it seems to have pulled it off.
The automotive startup offered up a pre-production (but very very close to production) Dream Edition Performance for us to review. The vehicle starts at $169,000 with 1,111 horsepower and range of over 450 miles — Lucid is taking its task very seriously. While the version we drove was sold out, it does give us a very good indication of what’s coming from the company. Watch the video review above for the full story.
Amelia Anisovych, 7, wowed a massive crowd at a charity event in Poland, where she is now a war refugee.
Amazon’s Fire tablets make good secondary devices for those who aren’t looking to drop hundreds of dollars on a new gadget. They also make solid kids tablets, too, especially if you get one of Amazon’s kid-specific variants. Fire tablets are affordable to begin with, but now Amazon’s discounted many of them by up to 50 percent. The Fire HD 8 is half off and down to $45, while the Fire 7 slab is 30 percent off and down to only $35. Plus, the entire Fire Kids Pro lineup is on sale, so you can grab one of those for as low as $50.
Buy Fire HD 8 at Amazon – $45Buy Fire 7 at Amazon – $35
The Fire HD 8 earned a score of 81 from us when it came out in 2020 for its refined design, USB-C charging, hands-free Alexa capabilities and long battery life. It’s slimmer than the previous version and has an 8-inch 1,280 x 800 display, the latter of which would make it a solid full-color e-reader for those that read a lot of graphics novels and manga. Inside is a quad-core 2.0GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and either 32GB of 64GB of RAM — plus, you could use a microSD card to expand the storage to up to 1TB. Performance is pretty good for a cheap tablet, and it’ll last up to 12 hours on a single charge. We’d recommend the Fire HD 8 for most people, and would only recommend the less powerful Fire 7 tablet for those with tight budgets, or those that want a super-affordable device to give to their kids.
Speaking of kid-friendly gadgets, the Fire Kids Pro slabs have some added features specifically for little ones and their parents. Along with all of the features you’d get on their standard counterparts, the Fire Kids Pro tablets come with a suite of parental controls, a two-year warranty, a protective case and one year of Amazon Kids+. With the latter, you’ll get access to age-appropriate books, shows, movies and more for one year before you’ll be asked to pay the $5-per-month charge ($3 per month if you’re a Prime member). Both the Fire 7 Kids Pro and the Fire HD 8 Kids Pro are half off right now, down to $50 and $70, respectively, while the Fire HD 10 Kids Pro is 30 percent less than usual and down to $140.
Buy Fire 7 Kids Pro at Amazon – $50Buy Fire HD 8 Kids Pro at Amazon – $70Buy Fire HD 10 Kids Pro at Amazon – $140
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Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2 is underway and this time around Epic has temporarily ditched one of the game’s core mechanics: building. Your harvesting tool will still destroy objects, but you won’t receive any wood, stone or metal to create a temporary base or instantly build a barrier to protect yourself from enemy fire.
Building will still be available in competitive, creative and Save the World modes — it’s only gone in casual queues for now. It seems that restoring builds will be a key part of this season’s storyline (at least in the early going).
To make up for the lack of building (and last season’s excellent web shooters being removed), Epic Games has added some more movement mechanics. The default run is now faster, and you’ll be able to sprint even more quickly for short bursts. If you sprint at or slide into a door, you’ll bust it open. Also new is the ability to mantle onto ledges that are just a little too high to land on with your feet.
In addition, players now have an overshield on top of their health and regular shield, giving them 50 extra shield points. When an enemy attacks, your overshield will be depleted first. Unlike health and shields, your overshield will recharge by itself.
Many, many other battle royales have popped up in the wake of PUBG. Building was one of the key features that helped Epic set Fortnite apart and make it one of the most popular games on the planet. Disabling builds for now gives Epic a chance to gauge player reactions, possibly with an eye on offering a permanent build-free mode.
Elsewhere, an Armored Battle Bus is on the way to Resistance-occupied points of interest, while there are blimps packed with loot at Imagined Order-controlled sites. As is typically the case, Epic has vaulted some weapons and items while adding new ones and unvaulting some others. It refreshed the map with some new areas too.
Until April 3rd, Epic and Xbox are donating all their proceeds from Fortnite to Ukraine relief efforts. That includes sales of V-Bucks, gifted Battle Passes and Fortnite Crew subscriptions.
The ex-president’s son seems to forget what his father did in times of crisis.
Microsoft isn’t just reserving watermarks for unactivated or bootlegged Windows copies. The Verge has learned that the most recent Windows 11 Release Preview build (22000.588) applies a watermark to the desktop if you use a workaround to run the operating system on unsupported hardware. Try it and you’ll see a “system requirements not met” notice that asks you to visit settings to learn more. There don’t appear to be any feature limitations, however.
The company started testing the watermark in rough Windows 11 builds released in February. Its inclusion in the Release Preview indicates Microsoft is ready to bring the alert to a completed software update in the near future.
Windows 11 officially requires either an 8th-generation Intel Core CPU or an AMD chip based on a Zen+ or Zen 2 architecture. Many believe the cutoff is arbitrary, and have used a Microsoft-sanctioned registry tweak to bypass a CPU check and install the OS without a rejection message. Microsoft has warned it might not provide updates to these PCs, but the software should still work.
In practice, a purely cosmetic mark like this is more a disclaimer than a deterrent — it’s a reminder that Microsoft won’t help you if the software misbehaves on an unsupported machine. If you’re comfortable bypassing the CPU check in the first place, you can likely remove the watermark as well. Still, this might prove annoying if you’ve been running Windows 11 on an out-of-spec PC without hassles.
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