services

Support phone numbers for DoorDash are down or slow-to-respond at the moment due to "issues" with the DoorDash "consumer platform." I say "this is just the beginning" in the title of this article because the ugly truth of DoorDash, its leadership, and its policies have been coming to a head for a while now, and with the legal head of the mess popping up earlier this week, now this, it's plain to see: Nastiness is about to go down.

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Don’t get us wrong, we want to see Google Stadia succeed as much as the next gamer. Google’s announcement of its upcoming video game streaming service made some serious headlines in the gaming world last week. Stadia is a Netflix-esqe platform where gamers can access a library of high-res games at the push of a button, without any stress on their computer. It’s an absolute dream come true.

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Razer has pulled the plug on the Razer Game Store, just ten months after its launch. The online store offered thousands of digital games in the form of product codes redeemable via Uplay and Steam, with the inclusion of special bundles and discounts. The gaming hardware brand stated it was for “realignment purposes,” but it’s hard to imagine the Game Store’s closure not being a big stab in the back for CEO Min-Liang Tan and company. They may have kept reasons brief, but perhaps Razer’s game plan was telling enough of why their stint in the gaming distribution scene were crushed this quickly.

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You may not know it yet, but your location is almost as important as your email address and password. It is one of the things hackers and advertisers love to know, precisely because of how much we've come to unknowingly depend on it. From check-ins to store deals to, of course, navigation, we've come to rely on location data in our modern lives. Even in navigation, however, location can be a hit or miss, both powered and limited by GPS technology. That is why for the next evolution of Google Maps, the search giant is mashing together augmented reality, computer vision, and AI to deliver more accurate and more useful directions and information.

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Some, especially real estate agents, would say it’s all about location. That’s only partly true when it comes to location-based services and technology. Because as important as knowing the location of an object may be, it’s sometimes just as important to know its direction relative to you. That’s why in the latest core specification of the Bluetooth standard, the wireless technology is finally getting a sense of direction.

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Just when you thought Facebook couldn’t sink any lower, a new discovery might have just added one more nail to its coffin. Then again, it’s really no surprise and Facebook doesn’t at all concerned about keeping it a secret. It turns out that even after you’ve turned off all possible location-tracking features and removed all location data on Facebook, you’ll still get ads related to your location. What makes it worse, however, is that the social networking giant doesn’t and probably won’t provide a way for users to opt out completely.

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Android features come and go and when it's Google involved, it happens more often than not. In some cases, it causes both developers and users to groan when a favorite feature they've relied on is suddenly announced to be discontinued. This time, however, Android phone owners are probably breathing a sigh of relief. Google has just announce that starting December, the Android Nearby Notifications feature will no longer be sending spam messages to users nearby.

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Almost all businesses these days keep track of customers and even just visitors, especially online. Of course, not everyone agrees to this now common practice and disable online tracking, like what Mozilla just provided in the latest Firefox release. Now Google is turning the tables a bit on those businesses. With the new feature in Google Maps’ “For You” tab, users will be able to track stores, locations, and businesses, too. Of course, they’ll only see what store owners want to show them.

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Today Google launched the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL with a couple of pretty enticing freebies onboard. One was a half-year of YouTube Music Premium for free, the other was unlimited photo storage with Google Photos (including original size photos and video, etc). Let's talk about the limits to these enticing bits before you jump in headfirst!

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Most people take for granted that, almost by default, their smartphones send their location to manufacturers and app developers unless they explicitly say no. Sometimes, however, “no” doesn’t actually always mean no. That’s the rather sticky situation that Google has suddenly found itself in after Associated Press launched an investigation on how the tech giant keeps on tracking your location even after you turn certain settings off. Now Google is updating its policy not to change the feature but to just let people know what it really does.

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Google Maps is one of those conveniences of modern life that many can't imagine life without. But more than just helping us not get lost, Maps also has one other somewhat controversial feature: location sharing. Now more than just knowing where your friends and family are, you will also be able to see how much battery they have left. You know, in case you need to swoop in to their rescue with a power bank.

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Today we're taking a brief, momentary, tiny peek at a couple of lists that show how Google and Amazon own our daily lives. When I say "daily lives" I don't mean Google and Amazon own our bodies and control our actions and have all of our personal information stored safely on their many hard drives - but two out of three ain't bad. I'm referring instead to the servers Google and Amazon run, the servers on which many or most of the services we use every day rely on and run.

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