Apple staff are already using ‘Tap to Pay’ at the HQ visitor center

In February Apple unveiled Tap to Pay, a new feature that will enable merchants to accept payments with only an iPhone — something that could cut into the business of companies like Square. Now, it turns out that Apple is already testing the feature at its own Apple Park visitor center in Cupertino. 

A video tweeted by user @NTFTWT, spotted by MacRumors, shows the system in action, with a customer making an Apple Pay payment directly to the iPhone of an Apple staffer. They simply needed to touch their iPhone to the other iPhone, with no payment terminal in sight. 

As we detailed earlier, the technology requires an iPhone XS or later device. It works with Apple Pay, of course, but will also support contact-free credit and debit cards, third-party payment platforms and other digital wallets. Stripe has already detailed plans to offer Tap to Pay on iPhone to business customers in the spring, with other platforms and apps scheduled to come later in 2022. Dutch processor Adyen will work with Lightspeed Commerce, Newstore and other commerce platforms to help them use Tap to Pay. 

Apple promised a future iOS beta giving developers a look at Tap to Pay, but it has yet to release a date. Now that it seems to be operational at Apple’s own office, though, it might be a sign that it’ll launch soon in the US and around the world. 

處處被看著？必備防窺配件推介

隨著科技進步，處理不同事情幾乎都在筆電、手機等裝置中進行，不論是輸入密碼或是跟別人聊天，在人口稠密的地方總覺得很容易被人看見，四下無人又會擔心被駭客入侵，導致私隱洩露。這時候防窺保護貼、鏡頭保護蓋都能派上用場。…

Uber Eats is launching two autonomous delivery pilots in Los Angeles

Uber Eats is launching not just one but two autonomous delivery pilots today in Los Angeles, TechCrunch has reported. The first is via an autonomous vehicle partnership with Motional, originally announced in December, and the second is with sidewalk delivery firm Serve Robotics, a company that spun out of Uber itself.

The trials will be limited, with deliveries from just a few merchants including the Kreation juicery and organic cafe. Serve will do short delivery routes in West Hollywood, while Motional will take care of longer deliveries in Santa Monica. “We’ll be able to learn from both of those pilots what customers actually want, what merchants actually want and what makes sense for delivery,” an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Uber will apparently charge for the deliveries from Serve. However, autonomous vehicle deliveries in California require a permit that Motional reportedly doesn’t possess, so it appears that customers won’t be charged for deliveries from their vehicles, for now. In addition, human operators will take control when near the drop-off locations “to ensure a convenient and seamless experience for customers,” a spokesperson said. 

Serve’s robots, meanwhile, will mostly be able to operate autonomously, but remote operators will take control in certain cases, as when crossing a street. 

Customers within specific test zones will have an option to have their food delivered by an autonomous vehicle and can track it as with a regular delivery. When the food arrives, they’ll be able to unlock the vehicle with a passcode to obtain their meals, either from a Serve cooler or the backseat of a Motional car. “The hope is that [the trials] are successful and that we learn over the coming months and then figure out how to scale,” Uber’s spokesperson said. 

繼 iPhone 轉為 USB-C 之後，蘋果推出的其他週邊也可能將擺脫 Lightning

如果說蘋果已經在測試採用 USB-C 的 iPhone 的話，那實話說該公司同時在準備讓所有對應的週邊，都逐步擺脫 Lightning 系統，也不是什麼太讓人意外的事了。分析師郭明錤也是持同樣的看法，在一篇推文中他表示其他目前使用 Lightning 埠的產品，斪括 AirPods、 巧控鍵盤／滑鼠／觸控板、MagSafe 電池等，都會在「可預見的未來」轉向 USB-C。…

Final former eBay employee involved in bizarre EcommerceBytes harassment case pleads guilty

Earlier this week, David Harville, one of seven former eBay employees involved in a 2020 campaign to harass the creators of a newsletter critical of the e-commerce company, pleaded guilty to five federal felony charges, ending one of the most bizarre e…

Buffalo gunman clips proliferate on social media following Twitch removal

Following Saturday’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, online platforms like Facebook, TikTok and Twitter are seemingly struggling to prevent various versions of the gunman’s livestream from proliferating on their platforms. The shooter, an 18-year-old white male, attempted to broadcast the entire attack on Twitch using a GoPro Hero 7 Black. The company told Engadget it took his channel down within two minutes of the violence starting.

“Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents,” a Twitch spokesperson said. “The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content.”

Despite Twitch’s response, that hasn’t stopped the video from proliferating online. According to New York Times reporter Ryan Mac, one link to a version of the livestream someone used a screen recorder to preserve saw 43,000 interactions. Another Twitter user said they found a Facebook post linking to the video that had been viewed more than 1.8 million times, with an accompanying screenshot suggesting the post did not trigger Facebook’s automated safeguards. 

A Meta spokesperson told Engadget the company has designated the shooting as a terrorist attack and added the gunman’s footage to a database it says will help it automatically detect and remove copies before they’re uploaded again. The spokesperson added the company’s moderation teams are working to catch bad actors who attempt to circumvent the blocks it has put in place.       

Responding to Mac’s Twitter thread, Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz said she found TikTok videos that share accounts and terms Twitter users can search for to view the full video. “Clear the vid is all over Twitter,” she said. We’ve reached out to the company for comment.

“We believe the hateful and discriminatory views promoted in content produced by perpetrators are harmful for society and their dissemination should be limited in order to prevent perpetrators from publicizing their message,” a Twitter spokesperson told Engadget. They added the company was “proactively” working to identify and take action against tweets that violate its guidelines.   

Preventing terrorists and violent extremists from disseminating their content online is one of the things Facebook, Twitter and a handful of other tech companies said they would do following the 2019 shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the first 24 hours after that attack, Meta said it removed 1.5 million videos, but clips of the shooting continued to circulate on the platform for more than a month after the event. The company blamed its automated moderation tools for the failure, noting they had a hard time detecting the footage because of the way in which it was filmed. “This was a first-person shooter video, one where we have someone using a GoPro helmet with a camera focused from their perspective of shooting,” Neil Potts, Facebook’s public policy director, told British lawmakers at the time.

Update 6:39PM ET: Added comment and additional information from Meta and Twitter.

A USB-C iPhone could be part of a broader move away from Lightning for Apple

Apple may be planning a broader move away from its proprietary Lightning port than was initially suggested in reports earlier in the week. According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the company is working on accessories, including AirPods as well as mouse and keyboard peripherals, that charge via USB-C.

Kuo shared the forecast in response to a tweet he posted on May 11th. In that earlier message, he said Apple would redesign the iPhone to feature the more universal port standard by the second half of 2023. Bloomberg later corroborated Kuo’s prediction.

Exactly when Apple could move its accessories to USB-C is unclear. Kuo only said the transition would happen “in the foreseeable future.” According to the report Bloomberg published on Friday, Apple won’t release a USB-C iPhone until next year at the earliest. It would make the most sense for the company to complete the move all at once, but there’s no guarantee it will do things that way.

As with a potential USB-C iPhone, Apple’s motivation for moving its accessories away from Lightning may have more to do with avoiding regulatory scrutiny than creating a better user experience. In an effort to cut down on electronic waste, the European Union has spent years pushing for a universal charging port and last month moved one step closer to mandating USB-C on all small and medium-sized electronics.