Pre-Pandemic Sized Crowds Descend On U.S. Airports For July 4 Holiday Weekend

The fireworks are still a few days away, but travel for the July Fourth weekend is off to a booming start.

Biden Is Giving Apple's Steve Jobs An Incredible Posthumous Award

Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on July 7.

BMW's Newest Electric Car Is Self-Driving In An Unexpected Way

BMW is bringing self-driving technology to a select number of is 7-series cars for a trial beginning this month.

Google will start removing abortion clinic visits from users’ location history

Amid data privacy concerns raised by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Google says it will remove abortion clinics and other facilities from users’ location history. Since the ruling, Google and other tech giants had largely remained silent about how they would handle requests for data about users in abortion-related investigations. Privacy experts have flagged the vast amounts of data collected by Google and other platforms as ripe for abuse by law enforcement and anti-abortion groups.

In a new blog post, Google states that it will attempt to remove locations from users’ location histories “soon after they visit.” The company was vague about exactly how it would identify these locations, or how long the removals would take. The company said the same process would also apply to visits to other types of health facilities. 

“Some of the places people visit — including medical facilities like counseling centers, domestic violence shelters, abortion clinics, fertility centers, addiction treatment facilities, weight loss clinics, cosmetic surgery clinics, and others — can be particularly personal,” Google writes. “Today, we’re announcing that if our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit.”

The company also said that Fitbit would be updating its app so users can bulk-delete their menstrual tracking information from the service. Other period tracking apps have also vowed to add new privacy and security features in recent days as concerns mount that cycle tracking apps could become a target for law enforcement investigations.

Google also addressed concerns about law enforcement’s broad requests for location data — an issue lawmakers have also urged the company to address. The company reiterated existing policies, including its practice of notifying users when their data has been requested, and pointed to its transparency reports that track such demands. The company also claimed it has a “long track record of pushing back on overly broad demands” and said it would “continue to oppose demands that are overly broad or otherwise legally objectionable.”

While the changes attempt to address one set of concerns that have been raised by privacy experts and activists, they won’t prevent the possibility users’ online or offline activities could be used against them in an abortion-related investigation. Google made no mention of whether it would remove abortion related queries from user’s search history or YouTube accounts, for example. Browsing history and other data is also routinely shared to Facebook and other advertisers, and data brokers are still easily able to obtain data about users’ past whereabouts. 

The 12 Scariest Episodes of Star Trek

This week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds delivered what might just be the closest Star Trek has ever gotten to an episode of genuine horror. Jump scares, tension, blood, gore, and lots of screaming, it had it all—but it’s far from the first time Trek’s trended terrifying. Here’s a few more of our creepy favorites.

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‘Selling Sunset’s’ Chrishell Stause Gushes About ‘Super-Open’ Relationship With G Flip

The realty reality star spoke candidly to Vogue about abortion rights, television and her recently revealed relationship with the Australian singer.

This Thor: Love And Thunder Xbox Series X Might Be The Most Ridiculous Custom Console Yet

Microsoft and Marvel forged an Xbox Series X console with a custom design for one gamer who, “if they be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”

GM Built 95,000 Vehicles It Can't Sell

Thanks to the semiconductor chip shortage, GM has a massive inventory of vehicles that can’t be sold yet.

FIFA OKs sensor ball and semi-automatic offside tracking for the 2022 World Cup

FIFA World Cup 2022 will feature an updated VAR (video assistant referee) system known as semi-automated offside technology, the international soccer governing body announced today. SAOT will replace the old (and still controversial) VAR system that FIFA first debuted at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The new system features 12 stadium cameras that will track the positioning of both the ball and each individual player, including 29 different data points on each player’s limbs and extremities. On top of that, a ball outfitted with a motion sensor will be used in each match, which will deliver live data on a player’s position at the time it’s kicked.

FIFA believes that SOAT will help match officials make faster and more accurate decisions on offside calls. “VAR has already had a very positive impact on football and we can see that the number of major mistakes has already been dramatically reduced. We expect that semi-automated offside technology can take us a step further,” said FIFA Referees Committee Chairman Pierluigi Collina in a statement.

According to ESPN, the new system should cut the average time it takes to make a VAR offside decision from 70 seconds to 25 seconds. The old VAR system required manually drawing offside lines and calculating the kick point. FIFA officials claim that SOAT will automatically select both the offside line and kick point in seconds, using both data from the ball and limb-tracking data from the cameras. Human officials will then manually confirm each decision. After each decision is reached, a 3D animation will be displayed to spectators that visualizes the offside decision.

While it may seem risky to debut a completely new virtual referee system at a global event like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a more basic version of SOAT went through trial runs at last year’s Arab Cup in Qatar and this year’s FIFA Club World Cup. You can watch a demonstration of SOAT here

Spoilers of the Week: July 1st

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