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Starting December 2, 2022, Amazon will be dropping all support and service for Cloud Cam devices and accompanying apps.

People first learned about the drop from an email Amazon sent out to customers. A user on the HomeKit subreddit was gracious enough to share the information. Going through the email, the entire video history from your Cloud Cam will be deleted on December 2, but you’ll be able to download the recordings. The Cloud Cam – Key Edition will also lose its functionality to connect to smart locks and manage codes on the final day.  

Amazon states in the email that they would rather focus on their other smart home tech; namely, Ring video doorbells and Blink security cameras. We reached out to Amazon and a spokesperson confirmed the shut-off date, the renewed focus on Ring and Blink, and revealed that people will be able to replace their Cloud Cams. 

In exchange for a Cloud Cam, Amazon will give you a Blink Mini and a Blink Subscription Plus Plan for one year. The Blink Mini is a small, budget indoor camera with a 110-degree field of view and can record in Full HD.

According to Blink, the Plus Plan will give you “motion-activated notifications”, the ability to share recordings, and regularly taken photographs among other features. Amazon is also offering a free 4th gen Echo to Cloud Cam – Key Edition owners to use as a hub for smart locks.

If you’re someone who has multiple Cloud Cams, you’re in luck. The Amazon representative clarified that for every active Cloud Cam you own, you’ll get a Blink Mini. And for every Cloud Cam – Key Edition you own, you’ll receive a Mini and a 4th gen Echo. All in all, a great way to accommodate people slated to lose their devices.

Amazon states that it will be sending out emails detailing how to get the free Blink Mini, Echo, and the one-year Plus Plan sometime before the December 2 shut-off date; although they didn’t say exactly when. And if you’d like to back up your videos, the recent announcement email gives detailed instructions.  

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(Image credit: TechRadar)

Analysis: Disappearing smart home trend 

Looking at recent trends, Amazon dropping Cloud Cam isn’t a random move, as a lot of smart home companies have been biting the dust lately. 

Back in April 2022, iHome shut down its service, effectively rendering the company’s devices useless. Insteon suffered the same fate and it was given to a financial service firm to manage the liquidation of its assets. 

Amazon appears to be weathering this downturn by focusing on a few brands over endlessly expanding. It looks like the smart home concept just isn’t as popular as these companies would have liked, but least Amazon is offering replacement devices and not ghosting people.  

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Latest Tech News

Thanks to the notorious Great Firewall, Chinese companies have been given license to build all kinds of services that rival Western firms, from Facebook to Google to Office. 

According to a report from MIT Technology Review, China's answer to GitHub, called Gitee, is suspected by developers of censoring open-source code, most likely at the direction of the government. 

Earlier in May 2022, Chinese developers found their open-source code had been blocked off pending a review, something that was set to become the norm. Gitee released a statement in effect saying the service "didn’t have a choice".

Gitee code review

The exact reasoning for the shift is unclear but many suspect the Chinese government has decided to expand its online censorship more broadly to include code that developers need to work. 

"Code review in OSS is about improving the code quality and building trust between developers," Berlin-based developer Han Xiao, who runs Jina AI, told MIT. "Adding politics to the code review will hurt both, and eventually roll back the open-source movement in China."

Almost every aspect of Chinese online life is careful monitored and controlled by the authorities, who are seeking to quell political resistance. Some areas, such as open-source developing, had remained free up until recently. 

According to one estimate, GitHub, acquired by Microsoft in 2018, had 7.3 million users in China in 2021, the most outside of the US. Overall, GitHub has around 73 million users. 

Sanctions muddy the water 

Gaining a clear insight into the thinking of the Chinese government is impossible for outsiders. However, it seems likely that US sanctions on Huawei and other Chinese companies in 2019 created the conditions for an increased lockdown on outside services. 

Prior to these sanctions, China had been fairly welcoming of open-source software and tools. Tencent and Alibaba released their own open-source tools and Gitee was created soon thereafter. The service says it has around eight million users. 

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While the motivates are up for the debate, the impact has been dramatic. The change on May 18 meant that huge amounts of code were suddenly unavailable to developers, who were given no warning and had no time to prepare contingency plans. 

One developer that spoke to MIT said that a laborious manual review helped reclaim numerous projects, but there surely isn't enough bandwidth to do that in all cases. 

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Google has announced that admins can now place shared drives into sub-organizational units (OUs) in certain editions of its Workspace suite.

In what could be a boon for IT teams working with Google Drive cloud storage, admins will now be able to configure sharing policies, data regions, and access management at a granular level. 

This feature is available now as an open beta, which means you can use the feature without opting-in to a specific program. 

What does this mean for users?

Currently, all shared drives reside in the “root” OU and are, as such, subject to the same policies. However, this update gives admins more options when it comes to cloud storage management.

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Admins will be able to move shared drives to sub OUs within their organizations, “Marketing” or “Legal” for example, which Google says allows for more control over the privacy and security of the shared drive's contents on a case-by-case basis.

For example, admins can restrict sharing of a shared drive belonging to the legal department because it contains highly confidential information.

Additionally, Google says this gives admins more flexibility over applying default sub OUs to newly-created shared drives, ensuring each new shared drive is subject to appropriate cloud backup security policies.

How to get started

Admins can assign shared drives to various OUs using the new “Organizational Unit” column found in "Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Manage Shared Drives".

Users can visit Google’s Help Center to learn more about shared drives and managing shared drive users and activity.

This feature is currently not applicable for end users and is not available for users of Google Workspace Business Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Frontline or legacy G Suite Basic and Business customers.

• Interested in improving communications within your organization? Checkout our guide to the best file transfer solutions.

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Microsoft is readying an upgrade for its Edge web browser that should solve a common frustration for users.

Included in the latest early-access build - available to members of the Canary Channel - is a new feature called Drop, which gives Microsoft Edge users an easy way to transfer notes, links and other assets between their devices.

As reported by Neowin, the Drop feature sits in a collapsible window on the right hand side of the screen and looks much like a chat interface. By dragging content into the window, users can set it aside for easy access on another device, provided both are registered to the same Microsoft account.

File-sharing in Microsoft Edge

The transition to hybrid working has meant that many of us are using multiple devices for work, from business computers and smartphones to laptops and tablets. A common frustration for employees in this scenario is the need to ensure files and other assets are available at all times, across all devices.

Although cloud storage and file transfer services like OneDrive and Dropbox go some way to relieving these issues, there is still a gap for a simple tool for sharing the odd image or link, without having to faff with uploading and syncing them across services.

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Until now, people have had to resort to sending themselves private messages over email or collaboration platforms like Slack, but by building the same functionality into the browser itself, Microsoft is providing a more sensible way to achieve the same objective.

As ever, all good things come at a cost; the new Drop feature won’t provide unlimited file transfers, but rather count towards the user's OneDrive cloud storage capacity, which will vary depending on their subscription plan.

Although the feature is not yet available to regular users, barring any disasters in testing, we expect Drop to land with a public Edge build in the coming months.

• For additional peace of mind, make use of one of the best cloud backup services around

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