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Airbnb has announced its deploying anti-party technology to prevent unauthorized and disruptive parties from happening at homes on its platform for New Years Eve. If you were planning on hosting a get-together, start thinking of a Plan B. The company says its using machine learning to identify and block high-risk, whole-home bookings in advance based on a variety of criteria. Airbnbs assessment takes into account things like the length of a trip, how far a listing is from your current location, and when youre trying to book to weed out potentially disruptive parties. If youre booking a two-night stay a week before New Years Eve, youre likely to tingle Airbnbs anti-party senses. The company will either block your reservation entirely or direct you to different accommodations. Party detection technology will be used in countries and regions globally, according to Airbnb. If youre trying to book an entire home in the US, Puerto Rico, Canada, the UK, France, Spain, Australia and New Zealand, youll also have to be willing to stay for more than three days and agree to a mandatory anti-party attestation to be allowed to book. Airbnbs transformation into the party police has been happening for a few years at this point. The company claims that it blocked 74,000 people globally from booking an entire home listing for a party in 2023. Its also deployed its machine learning tech to weed out unauthorized events before. Airbnbs stricter stance towards events started in earnest during 2019, when it banned party houses after five people died in a shooting at an Airbnb listing. Airbnb banned all parties outright in 2020, and the company now offers hosts multiple tools for tamping down noise complaints, including a free sensor that can be placed in homes to detect noises over a certain volume.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/airbnb-is-deploying-anti-party-technology-to-ruin-your-nye-party-193356056.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Staff at another video game studio have organized their own union. The Communication Workers of America (CWA) announced late Thursday in a statement that 461 workers for ZeniMax Online Studios (ZOS), the Maryland-based studio behind The Elder Scrolls Online, voted to form the ZOS United-CWA union covering web developers, designers, engineers and graphics artists by a vote of 395-40. The new union will allow ZeniMax staffers to collectively push for real improvements in the workplace and provide job security amid record layoffs, protections against AI, better pay and benefits, according to a statement released by the CWA. Im excited to finally see workers have a say in the workplace, encounter designer and ZOS United-CWA member Billy Eichner said in the statement. We already work together to make great games. Why not work together to make a great workplace? This isnt the first time that a group of ZeniMax workers have formed a union. Quality assurance testers at ZeniMax unionized in January of 2023, making it the largest union in the game industry at the time. Workers at other major game studios have followed the lead of QA workers at ZeniMax by forming their own unions. Sega of America workers unionized last March. More than 500 staffers who work on Blizzards World of Warcraft voted to form their union over the summer. Workers at Bethesda Game Studios, the developer behind Starfield, The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games, also voted to create a union in July.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/zenimax-online-studios-workers-form-their-own-union-190055555.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Microsoft has cut two of Skypes central premium features: credit and custom phone numbers. Instead of credits, the company is now pushing subscriptions priced regionally and globally, depending on your needs. As for using a phone number other than your cells, theres no longer an alternative on the platform. The first wind of the change came from a volunteer moderator replying in Microsofts Skype forums to a user who wanted to know why they couldnt buy new credits. We have just received new information from Microsoft, said Skype moderator Ruwim. B, who rocked a sweet Yoda profile pic. Skype has stopped purchase of Skype Credit for all users. The only option available now are monthly calling subscriptions. When another user chimed in to ask for confirmation that this meant there was no way on the entire platform to send SMS messages once youre out of credits, the moderator wrote, Unless they decide to add an ongoing SMS texting subscription, you will no longer be able to send outbound SMS texts from Skype. Screenshot by Will Shanklin for Engadget Microsoft confirmed the changes in a statement to TechCrunch, saying the company continuously evaluate(s) product strategy based on customer usage and needs. The spokesperson clarified that existing Skype numbers will still work and existing credit can still be used, but once youre out of credits, thats it. You can now only buy a subscription instead of credits, and youll have to seek out other platforms offering a virtual phone number you can answer over VoIP. Skype-to-Skype calls have always been free on the platform and still are. If thats all you use the service for, nothing should change. When calling out to landlines or supported mobile numbers (with remaining credits or a subscription), you can still use the services Caller ID feature, which displays your real cell number to the receiving party. So, axing Skype Number only affects you if you want to call or message non-Skype lines or if you want to display a custom number (like one with an area code local to the country youre calling) when doing so. The product sits alongside Google Voice as a service that once seemed primed to take on the new mobile world but instead settled into niche status. As alternatives like Zoom, FaceTime and WhatsApp rose to capture the bulk of the pandemic-era demand for internet calling and messaging, the Microsoft-owned Skype played second fiddle even within the company. Microsoft invested a lot more in promoting its preferred calling platform, Teams. You may have noticed that Microsoft doesnt advertise Skype as it did in the first few years after buying the company for $8.5 billion in 2011. It no longer makes a habit of touting Skypes user base in earnings calls (or anywhere else). As TechCrunch notes, the last mention was in a blog post from last year that said, More than 36 million people use Skype daily to connect through phone calls and chats across borders and around the world. It isnt clear whether those numbers are still current, and we also dont know how many relied on the premium features that have gone away. Regardless, we can assume theres still a healthy chunk of folks around the world relying on the platforms paid features to at least some degree. Those using anything but free Skype-to-Skype calls are now left to weigh a subscriptions cost or shop around.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/skype-phases-out-credits-and-phone-numbers-182520063.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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