Google Drive no longer has a 5 million item limit, a Google Workspace spokesperson said Monday evening. 

The about-face comes after people began complaining on Reddit and Google’s own support site of a previously unknown 5 million item cap on Drive. When people found out that Google deliberately implemented the change, they were particularly irked by the lack of communication from the search giant. Those with a large number of files in their Drive account were suddenly unable to upload new items or create additional folders, forcing some to consider deleting or consolidating millions of items.

The Google Drive team has since updated people on the situation via Twitter, saying that though the change affected only a small number of users, the team is now instead looking at alternate methods for optimization.

The team also tweeted that in the future it would do a better job communicating changes.

Google declined to comment.

When Google began rolling out a Drive limit in February, it went against industry norms. Microsoft’s OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Photos and Box don’t have item limits. The limit also meant that regardless of whether a person paid for 2TB or 30TB of storage, given enough small files, they’d hit the item limit well before reaching their storage cap.

The competitive cloud storage market was worth $78.6 billion in 2022, according to Markets and Markets.

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Google on Thursday unveiled its Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, smartphones that advance digital photography and incorporate handy new AI features. What Google needs along with a better product, though, is a better way to sell it.

The Pixel phones’ zoom abilities take a step toward the versatility of traditional cameras. Guided Frame gives voice prompts so that blind people can take selfies. You can use your voice to pick emojis. But all those features, which Google showcased at its Made by Google event in Brooklyn, are academic if the Pixel phones continue to barely even rate as a niche product.

See also: Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro and Pixel Watch: Everything Google Just Announced

Pixel phones have only a little over 2% of smartphone market share in the US, according to analytics firm StatCounter. Samsung, the top phone maker using Google’s Android mobile software, has almost 30% share in the US. Apple now holds a majority share in the US, the first time that’s happened since 2010.

A stronger Pixel presence could infuse Google innovations like computational photography, phone call screening and responsive voice dictation into more third-party Android devices. Google is forced to play a balancing act with its original equipment manufacturing, or OEM, partners, slowly nudging players like Samsung without getting too competitive. But given its niche status, Google needs to do a better job of getting people to buy its phones. Google can tap into stronger marketing, carrier partnerships and taking advantage of its dominance in home tech. Doing so will give consumers more than just the default two choices of iPhones and Galaxy S handsets.

“Google is trying to play this balancing act where they need to make the Pixel good, but I’m concerned if they’re not trying to go gangbusters and build the best flagship devices,” said Anshel Sag, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

It could mean Google is deliberately holding back, influencing but not threatening Android phone partners like Samsung, Motorola and OnePlus.

But the less successful Pixel phones are, the harder time Google will have recruiting good engineers and, ultimately, continuing the effort at all. Here are some changes Google could make so Pixels won’t remain a rarity.

Google didn’t immediately reply to request for comment.

Novel marketing

The right kinds of marketing moves could mean Pixel phones make a splash.

Former T-Mobile Chief Executive John Legere once let people borrow an iPhone 5S for a week so that they could try it on the T-Mobile network. By lending out iPhones, possible customers painlessly overcame fears about whether the company’s network actually worked at their homes. Google could benefit from that kind of maverick mentality. 

Google has deep pockets for ads, soccer jerseys, billboards and race car sponsorships to show off its products. But it can be hard to convince consumers that new features are must-haves, not just nice-to-haves.

“We’ve reached a point in the maturity cycle where these devices do more than most people want or need. Therefore, any device is good enough,” said Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen. Most cool features ultimately are merely “icing on the cake” that only appeals to the limited market of early adopters and other tech-savvy buyers, he said.

Google getting Pixels directly into peoples’ hands could help. Popup stores or booths at music festivals, for instance, could let potential customers see how well that Pixel 7 Pro camera really does zoom or appreciate just how fast their words appear on the screen while dictating a text.

Carrier cooperation

Carriers are still a primary way consumers buy their new phones. Walking into a store, people can talk to phone experts and find the devices that suit their needs. As for salespeople, they ultimately want the easiest sale. If a customer comes in and is veering toward an iPhone, it’s best to push them in that direction and move on to the next customer. For store associates to consider pulling people toward Pixel, they’ll need training and incentives. 

Even then, this would be a multiyear effort by Google and the company might face blowback from its OEM partners that also push millions of units inside T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon stores. 

“I feel like a multiyear effort looks very serious, and might be another point for OEMs to balk at Google for being too serious with Pixel and too competitive with them,” Sag said.

Trojan-horse Pixel with home tech

Google can take advantage of its relative strength in smart home technology to plug Pixel, too.

Google has competitive Nest doorbells, routers and smart speakers, products anchored by the strong Google Assistant technology. Amazon’s Ring and Echo products are strong, too, but Apple is relatively weak, and that opens the door for Google.

“There’s no contest that Google Assistant is by far and away a better product than Apple Siri,” Sag said.

With that foothold, Google could win consumers over to Pixel. Someone who already owns a Nest doorbell or thermostat could get a major price cut on a Pixel product. This could mean receiving a Pixel Tablet and magnetic charging dock at a discounted rate when bundling it with a Nest security suite.

Gartner’s Nguyen, however, is skeptical Google will go so far as to do hardware bundles to push additional Pixel products.

Sticktoitiveness

Google has been making phones since the Nexus One in 2010, putting a higher priority on the effort with the first Pixel phone and the Made by Google project in 2016.

Not everything has lasted so long at Google, as the recent cancellation of the Stadia cloud gaming service and the chronicles of the Killed By Google website show.

Year after year of steady improvement, though, can bring results. Google promises five years of security updates for the Pixel 7, a sign of long-term thinking. Google ordered 8 million Pixel 7 phones and hopes to double sales to 8 million for 2023, according to Nikkei Asia. The off-season phones, like this year’s Pixel 6A, offer excellent value.

A percentage point of market share here, a percentage point there — perhaps one of these years it will all add up to something meaningful.

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With its Pixel Watch set to debut Thursday, Google has a chance to make up for lost time by giving Android smartphone owners a worthy smartwatch — and giving them a better reason not to switch to Apple products.

On Thursday, Pixel phones and watches will share the spotlight with smart home devices and other hardware at the Made By Google fall product launch event in Brooklyn, New York. If the Google device division succeeds, its smartwatch could encourage customers to stay in the Android fold the way Apple Watches make it hard for people to dump their iPhones.

See also: Here’s where you’ll find our live blog for the Google Pixel event.

The Pixel Watch could be the missing ingredient in Google’s lineup of devices that can help lock you into its world of products and services. Google has plenty of other products like thermostats, Wi-Fi routers, smart speakers and networked doorbells that it can bring to this broad ecosystem competition. Expect to see a bunch of them at the Brooklyn event. But those don’t keep Android users from defecting to iPhones since the Google Home app that manages them runs fine on Apple products, too. 

A watch, on the other hand, is a more personal device. 

“One of the things that is keeping people locked into Apple’s ecosystem is once you buy an Apple Watch, it’s really hard to leave,” said Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart, noting the Pixel Watch will play a critical role in the Made by Google event. 

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This year, the iPhone surpassed devices running Android, Google’s mobile software, for the first time since 2010 as the smartphone of choice in the US. Apple’s phone dominance comes from advantages like strong product design, loyal customers, a wealth of apps and effective marketing. Apple CEO Tim Cook has also crowed about the rate of people who have dropped Android to make the jump to iOS. 

While the big tech companies like Google and Amazon have created families of interconnected devices, no one does it better than Apple. Accessories like the Apple Watch and AirPods work harmoniously together, reinforcing each others’ strengths and discouraging people from dumping one product or another. The Apple Watch only works with iPhones, making it hard for users who spent $399 on an Apple Watch Series 8 to switch to Android.

Conversely, Google’s Wear OS software hasn’t caught on widely. Apple’s Watch OS-powered Apple Watches locked in 29% of global smartwatch shipments in the second quarter of 2022, making Apple the single biggest company by far, according to Counterpoint Research. While Android makers create cutting-edge phones, not having strong smartwatch software made it hard to compete against Apple, and Google itself had no smartwatch product at all. 

The first Apple Watch arrived in 2015, the year after Google announced its Wear OS software effort. Apple’s initial sales pitch was somewhat muddled — was the Apple Watch a useful digital timepiece or an expensive fashion accessory? But the company hit its stride with steady annual improvements that cemented its smartwatch as a tool for communication, health and fitness.

Google struggled to achieve Wear OS success despite support from fashion brands such as Fossil and Michael Kors. Top Android phone maker partner Samsung abandoned Wear OS for its own Tizen OS instead. That rift only began to heal when Samsung came back to the Google fold with the Galaxy Watch 4 in 2021.

For the Pixel Watch to succeed, Google will need to give us a good reason to buy it, like superior AI features and integration with Android phones and Google services. That would help not just Google’s hardware division profits, but the whole Android world.

A good watch now can be as important as a good phone for customer loyalty. “I actually would argue that quite a few customers stayed with Apple because of Apple Watch, and not necessarily because of the iPhone,” said Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi.

Milanesi suspects Google’s hardware division, Made by Google, simply hasn’t had the funding and staff to compete effectively against the Apple Watch.

“We always need to think about Google versus Made by Google,” she said. “I think that Made by Google still has limited resources.”

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Google Search and Maps will use machine learning to become more food-friendly helping people search for specific dishes or vibes, the company said at its Search On event on Wednesday.

When searching for shumai, shawarma or shakshuka in either the Google Search or Google Maps app, people can scroll down to find additional filters. These filters can include things such as vegan or spicy, eliminating the need to pull up a specific restaurant’s menu. Other dietary filters will be coming, but Google will start with vegetarian and vegan first.

Google says it’s using machine learning to find a restaurant’s vibe or what makes it special. A result might say a specific restaurant is “like walking into a friend’s living room.”

Google primarily makes money from ad sales, which is linked to Search, the company’s most popular product. With the rising popularity of TikTok, the short-form video app gives people quick glimpses into what an experience might actually be like. It’s why among younger groups, TikTok has become a search engine in itself. Last year, TikTok dethroned Google as the year’s most popular domain. It’s something Google is paying attention to and is why the company launched YouTube Shorts in 2020, its own short-form video competitor. Google will also begin integrating more imagery and video in search results.

Multisearch, the ability to search with images and text simultaneously, will also be extended for food. For example, a person can take a photo of a pastry they’re not aware of, and Google will find what it is. A person can then add “near me” and Maps will be able to find bakeries that carry it.

Google says it’s also tackling the fragmented menu problem when searching for what to eat. Sometimes menus are photos other people have taken, other times it’s a downloadable PDF. Google will use its Multitask Unified Model AI to create easy-to-read digital menus with up-to-date information.

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With the iPhone 14 now on sale, people can experience some of the “breakthroughs” Apple touted during its reveal event. But for those on Android, some of these upgrades are very familiar.

Chalk it up to Apple’s much-touted “reality-distortion field.” It’s also a reminder to not take every claim at face value. While reviews for the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Pro are strong, it’s best to look at any upcoming big purchase decision — the Pro starts at $999 — with proper context.

Here’s a breakdown of all the features coming to the iPhone 14 that were first on Android.

Apple’s Newest Releases

• iPhone 14 Pro, Pro Max Review: Welcome to Apple’s Dynamic Island
• iPhone 14 Review: A Good Upgrade for Most People
• Apple Watch Series 8 Review: Improvement By Degrees
• Apple Watch SE Review: Almost Everything I Want
• Apple iOS 16 Released: New iPhone Features From the Update

Android did it before iPhone 14: Pixel binning

The iPhone 14 Pro will be the first iPhone to get a 48-megapixel camera. The pixel count is four times greater than for the standard iPhone 14 and last year’s iPhone 13 Pro. But with more pixels packed on a small smartphone camera sensor, it’s difficult for each pixel to get enough light to produce a nice image.

To counteract this, phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S21, OnePlus 9 and Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, as well as budget Android phones, will group bunches of pixels together to make them act as one large pixel. This workaround, called pixel binning, allows for sensors to process incoming light while also maintaining a high resolution. 

During Apple’s “Far Out” presentation, product manager Vitor Silva was careful to say that Apple is bringing a “brand new class of camera to iPhone” and not that the company was first to ever use this technique.

Android did it before iPhone 14: Video stabilization

Shaky video had long been a problem in smartphone videography. While phone makers have gotten better at reducing shaky video over the years, it hasn’t been at that GoPro-style action cam level. Thanks to advances in stabilization methods and post-processing, phones such as 2020’s Google Pixel 5 and Samsung Galaxy S20 have had Active Stability and Super Steady modes that helped people take smooth GoPro-like video while in motion.

All iPhone 14 models will get Apple’s new Action Mode, which should make for interesting shots when filming while running. It does look as if the mode will punch the image in for a tighter crop, as is common with other stabilization methods. Either way, Apple is late to the game on this.

Android did it before iPhone 14: Always-on display

Some version of always-on display tech has existed on Android for years. The feature was standard on the defunct line of Lumia Windows Phones when it was introduced in 2013. LG pioneered the feature in its smartwatches even before Samsung. Always-on allows for essential information, such as time or calendar events, to always be visible, without having to tap or touch the device. 

Greg “Joz” Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, said the iPhone 14 Pro’s Super Retina XDR display’s LTPO technology allows the screen to run at a slower 1Hz refresh rate and take up less power, although it’s not the first to do so. That honor goes to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra from earlier this year, which featured the same display tech. 

Android did it before iPhone 14: Pill-shaped selfie camera cutout

A defining trait of the last few generations of iPhones has been the large notch that sits at the top of the display. With the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple is following Android in moving beyond the notch for a pill-shaped cutout instead.

When Apple introduced the notch with the iPhone X in 2017, Samsung was quick to make fun of the odd design decision. Quickly, Android makers were looking for ways to limit their own selfie-camera notches by making much smaller incisions into the display or opting for hole-punch cutouts instead. The OnePlus 7 Pro went so far as to add a mechanism that allowed the selfie camera to pop-out of the frame, letting the screen be entirely unobstructed. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 opts for an under-display selfie camera, making the inner display almost obstructionless.

Either way, Apple is years behind in moving away from the notch. The new pill-shaped cutout is also noticeably wide. At least, with the addition of the Dynamic Island, a software feature that better integrates the cutout into the phone’s UI with unique animations, it makes the black trough palatable. 

Apple deserves some credit

Not everything Apple showed off with the iPhone 14 aped prior Android ideas. The A16 Bionic chip on the iPhone 14 Pro is a beast of a mobile processor and will likely remain king in the smartphone world, unless Google upends it with the Pixel 7 later this year. The Super Retina XDR display offers a peak brightness of 2,000 nits, surpassing the Galaxy S22 Ultra at 1,750 nits. The Emergency SOS satellite service feature is something that’s reserved for chunky satellite phones, but gives iPhone 14 users a way to call for help if ever in a dangerous situation in remote US or Canada. And the TrueDepth front-facing camera will give selfies a more natural bokeh effect. 

All that said, whenever a tech company flaunts its wares, it’s always good to have some degree of skepticism.

The post The iPhone 14’s Newest Features Have Been on Android for Years first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.

Google Photos is getting an update Wednesday that redesigns Memories, a feature that highlights past photos and packages them together with machine learning. A collage editor is also launching, on Android and iOS.

With the update, Photos will surface more of your videos and cut in photos as well. And new zoom effects will make viewing photos more dynamic, Google said. Next month, instrumental music will also play in the background when you’re viewing some Memories.

Last year, Google added motion to photos in Memories to create what it called Cinematic Mode. Google said it’s expanding that mode to also include Styles, graphic art meant to help photos pop. Several designs will be included at launch, with limited-time styles from artists Shantell Martin and Lisa Congdon.

Continued updates to Photos are part of Google’s strategy to keep people using its products, whether it be on iOS devices, Android gadgets or PCs. Photos, unlike its other services, isn’t entirely free and asks people to pay up for additional storage. Given the ease of capturing photos on smartphones, pics can quickly pile up, making organization a real problem. Google is counting on its Photos technology to make your pictures more useful, finding the winning shots and packaging them so they’re easier to appreciate and share.

People on Android will also be able to share Memories with friends and family who are also on Android. Google said this feature will expand to iOS and the web soon, but it didn’t give an exact date.

Lastly, a collage feature lets people pick photos and arrange them with drag-and-drop controls.

Along with the redesign and new features, Google said people can use existing editing tools for the new collage editor on Android and iOS, such as smart suggestions and Real Tone filters.

Correction, Sept. 14: The original version of this story contained a misstatement about smart suggestions and Real Tone filters. They’ve previously been a part of Google Photos. Now, with the new collage editor, you can use those features on images you add to a collage.

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Apple unveiled its new iPhone 14 lineup at its “Far Out” event, but reserved its biggest changes for its iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models. The new standout feature: The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max swap out the notch for a small pill-shaped screen cutout that houses a revamped TrueDepth camera unit for Face ID, selfies and video calls. 

Rather than ignore the cutout, Apple built a system of moving alerts and notifications called the Dynamic Island, which occupies the black space around it. Strange name aside, the feature is compelling in person and looks cool.

The Dynamic Island, not present on the iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Plus, is just one of the ways Apple widened the gap between Pro and non-Pro iPhone models. Another way is price: The iPhone 14 Pro starts at $999, $200 more than the iPhone 14. The 14 Pro costs the same price as previous Pro models and the iPhone X, which debuted in 2018. But some people will be put off by the 14 Pro’s price, or that of the 14 Pro Max, which starts at $1,099.

(If you missed the Apple event last week, check out our live blog. Plus, here’s what to know about the newly announced AirPods Pro 2, Apple Watch 8, Apple Watch Ultra and iOS 16.)

iPhone 14 display: Goodbye notch, hello Dynamic Island

From the back, the iPhone 14 Pro doesn’t look that much different from last year’s flagship, the iPhone 13 Pro. But from the front, the 14 Pro’s display cutout looks contemporary and fresh compared to the notch on the 13 Pro. The first thing I noticed picking up an iPhone 14 Pro was that the infamous notch was gone. The pill-shaped display cutout is so much smaller in comparison.

Apple’s Dynamic Island interface works so well, too. For example, I was listening to a song playing in Apple Music. When I closed the app there was a tiny waveform on one side of the cutout and a minute thumbnail of the album’s artwork on the other. When I tapped on the Dynamic Island, I was immediately taken to the song in the Apple Music app. 

The cutout is just one part of the Super Retina XDR display, which can now hit 2,000 nits of brightness for better visibility in bright light. By contrast, the iPhone 13 Pro maxes out at 1,200 nits of brightness. The 14 Pro uses LTPO, or low-temperature polycrystalline oxide, technology to bring the refresh rate down to 1Hz, which could help save on battery drain and allow for the always-on display. The 13 Pro’s LTPO screen bottoms out at 10Hz. 

iPhone 14 Pro’s A16 Bionic: The new chip for 2022

There’s also the new A16 Bionic chip which this year is just reserved for Pro models. The iPhone 14 and 14 Plus use the same version of the A15 Bionic chip found in last year’s iPhone 13 Pro. The A16 chip’s high-performance cores, for demanding tasks like gaming, use 20% less power than those on the A15 chip.

The A16 chip includes 16 billion transistors on a 4-nanometer process versus 15 billion transistors on the A15’s 5-nanometer process. The jump in computational power might not be as significant from the 13 Pro to the 14 Pro as it was from the 12 Pro to 13 Pro. It’s also uncertain how much RAM the iPhone 14 Pro will have as Apple historically doesn’t share iPhone memory details.

The GPU sees an upgrade as well, with 50% more memory bandwidth. The display engine on the A16 Bionic chip helps power the LTPO display as well as the Dynamic Island. Apple says the A16 Bionic’s neural engine is capable of 17 trillion operations per second, which is needed for computational photography.

In my few minutes with the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, the system animations seemed smooth and iOS 16 was peppy.

iPhone 14 Pro camera: Pixel binning arrives on the iPhone

The iPhone 14 Pro will have a 48-megapixel camera. The quad-pixel sensor uses pixel binning to group four pixels and have them act as one large pixel for better light capture. Android phones including the Galaxy S22 Ultra employ a similar technique with high-megapixel camera sensors. The handset’s Pro Raw mode allows photos to be captured at its full 48-megapixel resolution.

Apple developed a new computational image-processing method to take advantage of the new pixel pattern for better color accuracy and detail. It’s called Photonic Engine, which improves the iPhone Pro’s camera performance two times in low-light compared with the iPhone 13 Pro. The 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max can also use the 48-megapixel sensor to “punch-in” a photo, emulating a 2x zoom with the middle 12-megapixels of the sensor.

Read more: Why the iPhone 14 Pro’s 48MP Camera Deserves the Attention

The Photonic Engine processing also benefits the ultrawide camera with a three times improvement in low-light photos, and two times better on telephoto and front-facing camera photos.

Apple said the iPhone 14 Pro will come with Pro Video and Cinematic modes that can now record at 4K and 24 frames per second. Both Pro models also get Apple’s new video image stabilization which is called Action mode. Essentially when you are filming a video, on the top-left corner of the camera preview is the Action mode icon. When I tried it out, it seemed to work well smoothing out hand-shakes. I noticed that if I had video resolution set to 4K that Action mode reduced it down to 2.8K.

iPhone 14 Pro vs. iPhone 13 Pro

With the release of the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max, Apple also discontinued the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. Even though Apple isn’t selling last year’s Pro models doesn’t mean it’s entirely gone. Various third-party retailers and carriers might continue to sell the old Pro. But should you get an iPhone 13 Pro or an iPhone 14 Pro?In terms of features, hardware and lifespan the iPhone 14 Pro seems to outshine the iPhone 13 Pro in nearly every way. However, sometimes there isn’t a drastic difference between the two phones. If you own an iPhone 13 Pro it looks like upgrading to the iPhone 14 Pro is unnecessary. But if you have an older iPhone and are trying to choose between the two, I’d likely push you towards the newer 14 Pro, unless you’re getting an absolute killer discount on the 13 Pro.

iPhone 14 Pro: Battery life, price and other features

Apple said the iPhone 14 Pro will feature all-day battery life, longer than previous models. It’ll also include the newly unveiled features found in the base iPhone 14, such as Emergency SOS via satellite, a satellite-based system for communication in cellular and Wi-Fi dead zones, and Crash Detection, which lets the device know if you’ve been in a car accident. 

The new iOS 16 will be the operating system powering Apple’s iPhone 14 line out of the box. 

The iPhone 14 Pro will start at $999 (£1,099, AU$1,749). The 14 Pro Max will start at $1,099 (£1,199, AU$1,899). Both of Apple’s premium handsets are more expensive than the base iPhone 14 and 14 Plus devices, which start at $799 (£849, AU$1,399) and $899 (£949, AU$1,579) respectively.

Preorders began on Sept. 9, with the phones launching on Sept. 16.

See at Apple

Apple’s Newest Releases

• iPhone 14 Pro, Pro Max Review: Welcome to Apple’s Dynamic Island
• iPhone 14 Review: A Good Upgrade for Most People
• Apple Watch Series 8 Review: Improvement By Degrees
• Apple Watch SE Review: Almost Everything I Want
• Apple iOS 16 Released: New iPhone Features From the Update

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Google Maps is expanding its eco-friendly route options to calculate fuel and energy costs based on the types of vehicles people drive in the coming weeks, the company said in a blog post Tuesday. 

The feature allows people to pick the type of vehicle they’re driving — whether it be gas, diesel, hybrid or electric — in Maps and get an estimate on how much fuel or energy will be consumed on a given route. If the most fuel-efficient route doesn’t happen to be the fastest, people can choose the faster one instead. This feature is limited to mobile. 

Eco-friendly routes were introduced last year, letting people pick the drive that was the most fuel efficient. Google is now expanding this feature to 40 countries in Europe, including France, Ireland, Poland, Spain and the UK. Earlier this year, Google also added a traffic prediction widget to Android phones, letting people see current traffic conditions on their home screen.

Google’s push to add eco-friendly features to Maps comes as big tech companies aim to cut down on emissions, while also bringing customers along for the ride. Google said it eliminated its entire carbon legacy in 2020 and is using AI to help governments reduce carbon. Apple said it plans to be carbon neutral by 2030 and stopped shipping iPhones with chargers in 2020, saying it wants to cut down on e-waste. While these carbon targets are ambitious, some have pointed to the excessive use of Renewable Energy Certificates or Power Purchase Agreements to buy clean energy credits that offset dirty emissions.  

How to set Vehicle Type in Google Maps

Setting up your vehicle type in Google Maps takes only a handful of steps on mobile devices. 

1. Enter your destination

2. Tap on the three dots on the upper right-hand side

3. Tap Route options

4. Make sure Prefer fuel efficient routes is selected

5. Tap on Engine type

6. Choose the type of vehicle

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Google is updating search as it looks to ensure accurate voting information ahead of the US midterm elections in November, the company said in a blog post Thursday.

Through a new partnership, when you search for “how to vote” or make other voting-related inquiries (in both English and Spanish), Google will pull up information sourced from Democracy Works. The nonpartisan and nonprofit data provider collaborates with elections administrators to pull in key information on where and how to vote. 

Google reiterated that it has an ongoing partnership with the Associated Press to present authoritative election results as information comes in. The search giant said it’s also boosting local elections information, from a “range of sources,” to give people updates on local and regional news. This feature is set to go live in the coming weeks. 

Neither Google, Democracy Works nor the Associated Press immediately responded to requests for additional comment.

YouTube, Google’s video arm, will also elevate authoritative news sources to help fight against election misinformation.

The push by Google to promote accurate information ahead of the midterms comes as Meta (parent to Facebook and Instagram), Twitter and TikTok too have made commitments to combat misinformation. 

Election misinformation has been an ongoing problem for Big Tech. Following the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the former president and his allies have boosted incorrect information regarding the voting process.

Among other things, this has led to a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News by voting machine maker Dominion Voting. Dominion alleges Fox tried to boost ratings by disseminating a “manufactured storyline” claiming systems were rigged. Fox denies it. Dominion has also filed suits against former Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell.

Claims of rigged systems have been repeatedly debunked. But despite multiple recounts and audits, polls show that about 70% of Republican voters wrongly believe the 2020 election was stolen. Officials have called the 2020 election the “most secure in American history.”

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T-Mobile confirmed on Wednesday another round of layoffs, part of a broader restructuring program resulting from its 2020 acquisition of Sprint. 

The recent round of layoffs, which according to The Wall Street Journal affects network operations and engineering groups, follows a major round that left 5,000 workers out of a job last year. T-Mobile also let go of workers in July. 

“These shifts are the outcome of opportunities we have identified to evolve our structure so we can best focus our resources in the places where customers need and want us to be,” a T-Mobile representative said. 

T-Mobile said it has more than 3,000 positions posted and is working on helping employees affected by layoffs. The company didn’t confirm how many workers were cut loose in this round. 

Employee layoffs in telecommunications aren’t limited to T-Mobile. Verizon said it laid off workers last month after it lost 215,000 consumer accounts. Unlike Verizon, however, T-Mobile has been adding customers, gaining 1.7 million postpaid accounts, as disclosed in its second-quarter earnings report. Post-paid customers are those that are signed up to automatically pay their bill at the end of the month, and they’re seen as a key metric for success in telecom. 

In the lead-up to the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, T-Mobile said combining forces would lead to job creation.

The Sprint merger has resulted in upsides for T-Mobile, leading to $200 million in savings, according to the Journal.

The post T first appeared on Joggingvideo.com.