Gadgets & Tech – Spoken Edition

Apple has announced a “Customer Assistance Program” for its credit card aimed at helping those affected by the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic who may be struggling to make this month’s payment. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the news with Gizmodo via email Saturday after reports began circulating among Apple Card users on Reddit, as first spotted by MacRumors.

After being rumored for months and even being spotted on shelves a couple days early, Apple has finally announced its new Powerbeats 4 semi-wireless headphones. Designed as a less expensive alternative to the Powerbeats Pro, the $150 Powerbeats 4 are actually the most affordable Powerbeats ever, costing $50 less than the outgoing Powerbeats 3.

Last week, after Apple announced that that the company was closing all of its retail stores outside of China until March 27th as a result of the global coronavirus pandemic, the company has provided additional clarification about what Apple users should do in the event that an Apple device needs to be serviced or returned. In an FAQ related to the closures, Apple clarified that any Genius Bar appointments made prior to March 28 will need to be rescheduled.

In the time of social distancing, online gaming with friends seems like a no-brainer to stay sane and pass the time. Except if you’ve tried lately, it seems like every major service has been petering in and out. The latest is Nintendo. This morning, the Nintendo eShop is borked for both U.S. and UK users. Not to mention Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s online features failed to load in the UK.

No matter how we feel about tackling the current coronavirus situation, the consensus from federal and public health officials seems to be the same: we need more data to do it. So naturally, it makes sense to look to the data-hoovering tech companies to lend their expertise on the issue. At least, that’s what’s reportedly going through the mind of officials in the U.S. government.

Facebook’s automated moderation tools went wild and targeted tons of posts about the coronavirus pandemic and other topics on Tuesday evening, blocking users from sharing articles from legitimate news sources.

After former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos tweeted that the errors could be “the start of the [machine learning] going nuts with less human oversight,” current vice president of integrity Guy Rosen responded that “a bug in an anti-spam system” was to blame. He also shot down speculation that the problem was related to an outbreak-related shortage of onsite human moderators. (Facebook said it would pay full time working from home $1,000 to deal with emergency conditions, but the long-suffering contract workers that staff its moderation systems are only eligible for continued pay.)

“We’re on this—this is a bug in an anti-spam system, unrelated to any changes in our content moderator workforce,” Rosen wrote. “We’re in the process of fixing and bringing all these posts back.” Later on Tuesday evening, he tweeted that the issue was not specific to coronavirus-related content, adding that it should be fixed and all posts erroneously flagged as spam should be restored. However, other Twitter users responded that the issues weren’t yet resolved for them.

Screenshots posted to Twitter and elsewhere showed the system was informing users, “Your post goes against our Community Standards on spam.” Facebook had previously conceded that the spread of coronavirus throughout the U.S. might tax the abilities of its automated tools to the limit.

As TechCrunch noted, Facebook’s sheer scale means that it plays a central role in transmitting information about the outbreak. Breakdowns in automated systems could thus have a greater impact than during business as usual, with major disruptions to daily life and concern that the situation could grow worse playing out across the globe.

Facebook has claimed to be fighting misinformation on its platform about the virus and the disease it causes, covid-19, as well as to be restricting ads for products that fraudulently claim to cure it. It’s also placed a ban on advertising face masks after shortages resulted in widespread price gouging. This week, it signed a joint pledge to prevent the spread of false information with Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, but Facebook’s shoddy track record on effectively moderating its platform isn’t exactly a great omen for how it will handle the flood of coronavirus B.S. already spewing out.

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank is trying to backpedal from part of its bailout of tanking coworking space firm WeWork, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations into the latter company’s business practices.

Quibi, the mobile-first video service that’ll feature episodes of 10 minutes or less, announced this month the absolutely massive slate of originals coming to the service when it officially rolls out in April. But at the time of that announcement, one show stood out among the others, and folks, I believe that our suspicions about it then have been confirmed: Murder House Flip is the perfect TV show.

The only thing worse than gagging down reheated french fries is stomaching leftover rice you’ve resurrected in the microwave. But there’s now a fresh alternative: T his electric Bento Box can make a single serving of rice at a time. If your family eats rice as part of several meals each day, a large multi-cup rice cooker is still the way to go, and it’s one of the few appliances worthy of a permanent place on your kitchen counters.

DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused tech company , today launched something called Tracker Radar—an open-source, automatically generated and continually updated list that currently contains more than 5,000 domains that more than 1,700 companies use to track people online. The idea behind Tracker Radar, first reported by CNET, is to share the data DuckDuckGo has collected to create a better set of tracker blockers.