Month: August 2024
Google has to face a class action lawsuit over Chrome’s data collection
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
Google will have to face a class action lawsuit that accuses it of collecting users’ data through Chrome without their consent. In a decision on Tuesday, a federal appeals court reversed a December 2022 ruling that dismissed the case, saying the lower court should’ve reviewed Google’s disclosures and determined “whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection.”
The class action lawsuit, first filed in 2020, alleged that Google collected data from Chrome users — regardless of whether they enabled Chrome sync. This feature saves bookmarks, passwords, open tabs, and other data to your Google account, giving you easy access to this information when signed into Chrome on multiple devices.
The plaintiffs claimed Chrome “intentionally and unlawfully” sent Google browsing history, IP addresses, persistent cookie identifiers, and unique browser identifiers without their explicit permission. At the time, Google argued users consented to this by accepting the company’s privacy policy. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed, stating in her order granting dismissal that “Google adequately disclosed, and plaintiffs consented to, the collection of the at-issue data.”
However, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. writes in today’s decision that Judge Gonzalez Rogers didn’t take into account whether users actually understood this agreement. “Google had a general privacy disclosure yet promoted Chrome by suggesting that certain information would not be sent to Google unless a user turned on sync,” Smith writes. The case will be returned to the lower courts for reconsideration.
“We disagree with this ruling and are confident the facts of the case are on our side. Chrome Sync helps people use Chrome seamlessly across their different devices and has clear privacy controls,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda says in a statement to The Verge. And while Google will soon no longer require users to enable Chrome sync to access saved information, Castañeda says, “This announcement is not related to the litigation.”
Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge
Google will have to face a class action lawsuit that accuses it of collecting users’ data through Chrome without their consent. In a decision on Tuesday, a federal appeals court reversed a December 2022 ruling that dismissed the case, saying the lower court should’ve reviewed Google’s disclosures and determined “whether a reasonable user reading them would think that he or she was consenting to the data collection.”
The class action lawsuit, first filed in 2020, alleged that Google collected data from Chrome users — regardless of whether they enabled Chrome sync. This feature saves bookmarks, passwords, open tabs, and other data to your Google account, giving you easy access to this information when signed into Chrome on multiple devices.
The plaintiffs claimed Chrome “intentionally and unlawfully” sent Google browsing history, IP addresses, persistent cookie identifiers, and unique browser identifiers without their explicit permission. At the time, Google argued users consented to this by accepting the company’s privacy policy. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed, stating in her order granting dismissal that “Google adequately disclosed, and plaintiffs consented to, the collection of the at-issue data.”
However, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. writes in today’s decision that Judge Gonzalez Rogers didn’t take into account whether users actually understood this agreement. “Google had a general privacy disclosure yet promoted Chrome by suggesting that certain information would not be sent to Google unless a user turned on sync,” Smith writes. The case will be returned to the lower courts for reconsideration.
“We disagree with this ruling and are confident the facts of the case are on our side. Chrome Sync helps people use Chrome seamlessly across their different devices and has clear privacy controls,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda says in a statement to The Verge. And while Google will soon no longer require users to enable Chrome sync to access saved information, Castañeda says, “This announcement is not related to the litigation.”
Google Classroom comes back from summer break with a better approach to group projects
Illustration: The Verge
Today, Google announced it’s making assigning group work in Google Classroom easier and faster with a new feature called Student Groups. Teachers will now be able to add individual students to predefined groups before creating and assigning group work.
Google is entering this school year with a bunch of new updates for the now 10-year-old Classroom platform, like a new Education Navigator, a Read Along feature, and Dark Mode to the mobile app. But teachers have been waiting for something like Student Groups for a long time.
Previously, teachers would need to create an assignment first and then individually add students to that assignment if they wanted to assign group work. For occasional group projects, this worked okay, but it was a pain for teachers who regularly have their students do group work — especially if their students remained in the same groups throughout the school year.
Image: Google
But now, the process of assigning group work is no longer as much of a hassle. From inside the People tab, teachers can use the new Group button above the class roster to create, name, add, and modify custom student groups. These groups will be an available option whenever a teacher creates an assignment.
Previously, Google added the ability to import class rosters from certain Student Information Systems (SIS), which meant some teachers no longer had to manually add student names one at a time into every new Classroom they created.
Illustration: The Verge
Today, Google announced it’s making assigning group work in Google Classroom easier and faster with a new feature called Student Groups. Teachers will now be able to add individual students to predefined groups before creating and assigning group work.
Google is entering this school year with a bunch of new updates for the now 10-year-old Classroom platform, like a new Education Navigator, a Read Along feature, and Dark Mode to the mobile app. But teachers have been waiting for something like Student Groups for a long time.
Previously, teachers would need to create an assignment first and then individually add students to that assignment if they wanted to assign group work. For occasional group projects, this worked okay, but it was a pain for teachers who regularly have their students do group work — especially if their students remained in the same groups throughout the school year.
Image: Google
But now, the process of assigning group work is no longer as much of a hassle. From inside the People tab, teachers can use the new Group button above the class roster to create, name, add, and modify custom student groups. These groups will be an available option whenever a teacher creates an assignment.
Previously, Google added the ability to import class rosters from certain Student Information Systems (SIS), which meant some teachers no longer had to manually add student names one at a time into every new Classroom they created.
Shein is now copying Temu’s copyright lawsuit
How many of those $5 skirts do these retailers have to sell to pay their lawyers? | Image: The Verge
The Shein complaint about Temu kicks off with a bang, accusing Temu of being “an unlawful enterprise built on counterfeiting, theft of trade secrets, infringement of intellectual property rights, and fraud” in just the first sentence. But I guess you have to go big when the lawsuit against you accuses you of using “Mafia-style” intimidation tactics.
It gets worse, Shein alleges. Temu isn’t a marketplace at all. “It controls every aspect of its seller’s activity,” the complaint says. “It directs what products they can list and the prices for which they can sell; encourages them to infringe the intellectual property rights of others; and even prevents them from removing their products from Temu’s website after they have admitted to infringement.” I would like to be clear: I am still in the first paragraph of this complaint, a paragraph which uses bitchy scare-quotes around every incidence of calling Temu a “marketplace.”
Pretty intense beef over who can sell $5 skirts
This is just the latest sally in the ongoing legal wrangling between the two bargain retailers. They’ve sent each other legal nastygrams before: Temu accused Shein of browbeating manufacturers to cut Temu off, Shein claimed Temu told influencers to say “false and deceptive statements” about Shein in promotional material. Those two suits were dropped in October. Then, in December, Temu sued Shein again, alleging that Shein had “gone so far as to falsely imprison merchants doing business with Temu.”
Pretty intense beef over who can sell $5 skirts, if you ask me.
Shein has filed paperwork to go public in the US, and it could do so as early as this year. It’s been trying to shed its reputation for bad working conditions and a sketchy supply chain, which relies heavily on China.
Shein also has a reputation for ripping off independent designers, so its accusations that Temu is “built on counterfeiting” is really something. Shein began selling in the US in 2017, and was followed by Temu in 2022, as part of a race to the bottom from online retailers including Amazon. When Temu followed Shein into the US, Shein’s valuation dropped by more than $30 billion, Temu alleged in its December lawsuit. In December 2023, Temu sold three times as much as Shein in the US. Both are using a trade loophole, the de minimus exception, that means packages worth less than $800 entering the US from China are duty-free.
“This relentless pursuit of low prices is central to its business model and competitive strategy but its low prices are achieved by any means,” Shein writes of Temu in its lawsuit today. I wonder who else we could say that about!
Among Temu’s alleged tactics:
Stealing trade secrets, including internal pricing information
Pretended to be Shein on Twitter “in an effort to misdirect customers”
Used Shein’s trademark in Google ads for Temu
Losing “an average of $30” on every order placed to secure its market
Shein itself is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that it’s engaged in “industrial-scale scheme of systematic, digital copyright infringement of the work of small designers and artists.” It has also been sued by For Love and Lemons, H&M, Levi Strauss, and Uniqlo, among others.
How many of those $5 skirts do these retailers have to sell to pay their lawyers? | Image: The Verge
The Shein complaint about Temu kicks off with a bang, accusing Temu of being “an unlawful enterprise built on counterfeiting, theft of trade secrets, infringement of intellectual property rights, and fraud” in just the first sentence. But I guess you have to go big when the lawsuit against you accuses you of using “Mafia-style” intimidation tactics.
It gets worse, Shein alleges. Temu isn’t a marketplace at all. “It controls every aspect of its seller’s activity,” the complaint says. “It directs what products they can list and the prices for which they can sell; encourages them to infringe the intellectual property rights of others; and even prevents them from removing their products from Temu’s website after they have admitted to infringement.” I would like to be clear: I am still in the first paragraph of this complaint, a paragraph which uses bitchy scare-quotes around every incidence of calling Temu a “marketplace.”
This is just the latest sally in the ongoing legal wrangling between the two bargain retailers. They’ve sent each other legal nastygrams before: Temu accused Shein of browbeating manufacturers to cut Temu off, Shein claimed Temu told influencers to say “false and deceptive statements” about Shein in promotional material. Those two suits were dropped in October. Then, in December, Temu sued Shein again, alleging that Shein had “gone so far as to falsely imprison merchants doing business with Temu.”
Pretty intense beef over who can sell $5 skirts, if you ask me.
Shein has filed paperwork to go public in the US, and it could do so as early as this year. It’s been trying to shed its reputation for bad working conditions and a sketchy supply chain, which relies heavily on China.
Shein also has a reputation for ripping off independent designers, so its accusations that Temu is “built on counterfeiting” is really something. Shein began selling in the US in 2017, and was followed by Temu in 2022, as part of a race to the bottom from online retailers including Amazon. When Temu followed Shein into the US, Shein’s valuation dropped by more than $30 billion, Temu alleged in its December lawsuit. In December 2023, Temu sold three times as much as Shein in the US. Both are using a trade loophole, the de minimus exception, that means packages worth less than $800 entering the US from China are duty-free.
“This relentless pursuit of low prices is central to its business model and competitive strategy but its low prices are achieved by any means,” Shein writes of Temu in its lawsuit today. I wonder who else we could say that about!
Among Temu’s alleged tactics:
Stealing trade secrets, including internal pricing information
Pretended to be Shein on Twitter “in an effort to misdirect customers”
Used Shein’s trademark in Google ads for Temu
Losing “an average of $30” on every order placed to secure its market
Shein itself is facing a class action lawsuit alleging that it’s engaged in “industrial-scale scheme of systematic, digital copyright infringement of the work of small designers and artists.” It has also been sued by For Love and Lemons, H&M, Levi Strauss, and Uniqlo, among others.
Major ‘National Public Data’ Leak Worse Than Expected With Passwords Stored in Plain Text
Earlier this month, data broker National Public Data (NPD) announced that there had been a major data breach that saw hackers obtain millions of names, email addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and mailing addresses stored in its database. NPD is a company that does employee background checks, aggregating public data from numerous sources and selling it.
NPD’s security was clearly lacking to allow for the breach in the first place, but a new report from KrebsOnSecurity suggests that an NPD sister site made an even more grievous error, hosting an easily accessible plaintext archive with usernames and passwords.
RecordsCheck.net, a site affiliated with NPD that hosts much of the same information, had a “members.zip” file that was downloadable until yesterday. It had source code and plain text usernames and passwords for RecordsCheck users, including logins belonging to NPD’s founder, Salvatore Verini. The logins that were made available through RecordsCheck allowed access to the same data that was available via NPD.
After being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, RecordsCheck removed the file, and NPD is shutting down the site, according to Verini. He told the KrebsOnSecurity that the file had an “old version of the site with non-working code and passwords.”
There are websites that are available to see if your information was leaked in the NPD breach, and it is advisable to lock down your credit.
The NPD leak included decades of information, including data from people who are now deceased. 137 million email addresses were leaked, as were 272 million social security numbers. A lawsuit has since been filed against NPD.This article, “Major ‘National Public Data’ Leak Worse Than Expected With Passwords Stored in Plain Text” first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums
Earlier this month, data broker National Public Data (NPD) announced that there had been a major data breach that saw hackers obtain millions of names, email addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, and mailing addresses stored in its database. NPD is a company that does employee background checks, aggregating public data from numerous sources and selling it.
NPD’s security was clearly lacking to allow for the breach in the first place, but a new report from KrebsOnSecurity suggests that an NPD sister site made an even more grievous error, hosting an easily accessible plaintext archive with usernames and passwords.
RecordsCheck.net, a site affiliated with NPD that hosts much of the same information, had a “members.zip” file that was downloadable until yesterday. It had source code and plain text usernames and passwords for RecordsCheck users, including logins belonging to NPD’s founder, Salvatore Verini. The logins that were made available through RecordsCheck allowed access to the same data that was available via NPD.
After being alerted by KrebsOnSecurity, RecordsCheck removed the file, and NPD is shutting down the site, according to Verini. He told the KrebsOnSecurity that the file had an “old version of the site with non-working code and passwords.”
There are websites that are available to see if your information was leaked in the NPD breach, and it is advisable to lock down your credit.
The NPD leak included decades of information, including data from people who are now deceased. 137 million email addresses were leaked, as were 272 million social security numbers. A lawsuit has since been filed against NPD.
This article, “Major ‘National Public Data’ Leak Worse Than Expected With Passwords Stored in Plain Text” first appeared on MacRumors.com
Discuss this article in our forums
‘The Pirate Bay’ TV Series Teaser Appears Online
A new TV series is capturing the dramatic saga of the The Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing website that openly challenged the entertainment industry in the early 2000s. A just-launched teaser is available on YouTube. TorrentFreak reports: A few years ago, news broke that The Pirate Bay story was being turned into a TV series. Written by Piotr Marciniak and directed by Jens Sjogren, who also made the “I am Zlatan” documentary, production was in the hands of B-Reel Films, working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT. American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights. As far as we know, international deals have not yet been announced. The Swedish premiere on November 8 is coming closer, however, and a few days ago SVT released an official teaser.
The founders of The Pirate Bay — Anakata, Brokep and Tiamo — are played by Arvid Swedrup, Simon Greger Carlsson and Willjam Lempling. The teaser doesn’t give away much, but it’s interesting that one of The Pirate Bay’s infamous responses to legal threats features prominently. The teaser quotes from Anakata’s response to a letter from DreamWorks, written twenty years ago. The movie company sent a DMCA takedown notice requesting the removal of a torrent for the film Shrek 2, but the reply was not what they had hoped for. “As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here,” Anakata wrote. “It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are …….. morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.”
The response was public information and made it into the series. Whether there will be any new revelations has yet to be seen, however, as none of the site’s founders were actively involved in production. Instead, the producers used interviews with other people involved, plus the vast amount of public information available on the Internet. That includes the infamous responses to legal threats. Time will tell how the producers and director have decided to tell this story. Production took place in Stockholm, Sweden, but also ventured to other countries, including Chile and Thailand, where Fredrik Neij was arrested and paraded in front of the press in 2014.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A new TV series is capturing the dramatic saga of the The Pirate Bay, the notorious file-sharing website that openly challenged the entertainment industry in the early 2000s. A just-launched teaser is available on YouTube. TorrentFreak reports: A few years ago, news broke that The Pirate Bay story was being turned into a TV series. Written by Piotr Marciniak and directed by Jens Sjogren, who also made the “I am Zlatan” documentary, production was in the hands of B-Reel Films, working for the Swedish broadcaster SVT. American distribution company Dynamic Television scooped up worldwide rights. As far as we know, international deals have not yet been announced. The Swedish premiere on November 8 is coming closer, however, and a few days ago SVT released an official teaser.
The founders of The Pirate Bay — Anakata, Brokep and Tiamo — are played by Arvid Swedrup, Simon Greger Carlsson and Willjam Lempling. The teaser doesn’t give away much, but it’s interesting that one of The Pirate Bay’s infamous responses to legal threats features prominently. The teaser quotes from Anakata’s response to a letter from DreamWorks, written twenty years ago. The movie company sent a DMCA takedown notice requesting the removal of a torrent for the film Shrek 2, but the reply was not what they had hoped for. “As you may or may not be aware, Sweden is not a state in the United States of America. Sweden is a country in northern Europe. Unless you figured it out by now, US law does not apply here,” Anakata wrote. “It is the opinion of us and our lawyers that you are …….. morons, and that you should please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.”
The response was public information and made it into the series. Whether there will be any new revelations has yet to be seen, however, as none of the site’s founders were actively involved in production. Instead, the producers used interviews with other people involved, plus the vast amount of public information available on the Internet. That includes the infamous responses to legal threats. Time will tell how the producers and director have decided to tell this story. Production took place in Stockholm, Sweden, but also ventured to other countries, including Chile and Thailand, where Fredrik Neij was arrested and paraded in front of the press in 2014.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Disney cancels The Acolyte after one season
Star Wars series was admittedly uneven, but didn’t deserve the online hate it received.
Enlarge / We have doubts that any amount of Force powers will bring the show back. (credit: YouTube/Disney+)
In news that will delight some and disappoint others, Disney has canceled Star Wars series The Acolyte after just one season, Deadline Hollywood reports. The eight-episode series got off to a fairly strong start, with mostly positive reviews and solid ratings, albeit lower than prior Star Wars series. But it couldn’t maintain and build upon that early momentum, and given the production costs, it’s not especially surprising that Disney pulled the plug.
The Acolyte arguably wrapped up its major narrative arc pretty neatly in the season finale, but it also took pains to set the stage for a possible sophomore season. In this streaming age, no series is ever guaranteed renewal. Still, it would have been nice to see what showrunner Leslye Headland had planned; when given the chance, many shows hit their stride on those second-season outings.
(Spoilers for the series below. We’ll give you another heads-up when we get to major spoilers.)
Prepare for world domination when Civilization VII arrives in February 2025
Firaxis Games announced the release date and shared gameplay for Sid Meier’s Civilization VII at Gamescom 2024. The strategy game will launch on February 11, 2025. It’s been a long wait for fans since Civilization VI arrived back in 2016, and today’s announcements at Gamescom mark a few departures for the storied empire-building series.
For starters, the game will be released across platforms. It will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox and Nintendo Switch at launch. Past entries in the series have arrived on console much later post-release, and sometimes with very clunky ports. Hopefully this approach means a better console experience for Civ VII.
There are also some big changes in gameplay that the team highlighted during a Gamescom livestream. In previous Civilization games, you’d pick one famed leader from history and stick with them for the scenario, guiding their single empire across the decades and centuries. With Civ VII, you’ll pick a new civilization at the start of each age that will continue building on what you’ve already accomplished.
Your options at the start of a new age will vary based on historical context and what you’ve already done with your current civilization. A full game will have three time periods – the Antiquity Age, the Exploration Age and the Modern Age – or you can opt to play a single-age scenario. For even more variety, players will also be able to mix and match, picking from the whole roster of potential leaders and pairing them with historically inaccurate locations. This should yield a whole new array of intriguing and entertaining situations for players to create.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/prepare-for-world-domination-when-civilization-vii-arrives-in-february-2025-213051202.html?src=rss
Firaxis Games announced the release date and shared gameplay for Sid Meier’s Civilization VII at Gamescom 2024. The strategy game will launch on February 11, 2025. It’s been a long wait for fans since Civilization VI arrived back in 2016, and today’s announcements at Gamescom mark a few departures for the storied empire-building series.
For starters, the game will be released across platforms. It will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox and Nintendo Switch at launch. Past entries in the series have arrived on console much later post-release, and sometimes with very clunky ports. Hopefully this approach means a better console experience for Civ VII.
There are also some big changes in gameplay that the team highlighted during a Gamescom livestream. In previous Civilization games, you’d pick one famed leader from history and stick with them for the scenario, guiding their single empire across the decades and centuries. With Civ VII, you’ll pick a new civilization at the start of each age that will continue building on what you’ve already accomplished.
Your options at the start of a new age will vary based on historical context and what you’ve already done with your current civilization. A full game will have three time periods – the Antiquity Age, the Exploration Age and the Modern Age – or you can opt to play a single-age scenario. For even more variety, players will also be able to mix and match, picking from the whole roster of potential leaders and pairing them with historically inaccurate locations. This should yield a whole new array of intriguing and entertaining situations for players to create.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/prepare-for-world-domination-when-civilization-vii-arrives-in-february-2025-213051202.html?src=rss
CEO of failing hospital chain got $250M amid patient deaths, layoffs, bankruptcy
Steward Health Care System, run by CEO Ralph de la Torre, filed for bankruptcy in May.
Enlarge / Hospital staff and community members held a protest in front of Carney Hospital in Boston on August 5 as Steward has announced it will close the hospital. “Ralph” refers to Steward’s CEO, Ralph de la Torre, who owns a yacht. (credit: Getty | Suzanne Kreiter)
As the more than 30 hospitals in the Steward Health Care System scrounged for cash to cover supplies, shuttered pediatric and neonatal units, closed maternity wards, laid off hundreds of health care workers, and put patients in danger, the system paid out at least $250 million to its CEO and his companies, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
The newly revealed financial details bring yet more scrutiny to Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre, a Harvard University-trained cardiac surgeon who, in 2020, took over majority ownership of Steward from the private equity firm Cerberus. De la Torre and his companies were reportedly paid at least $250 million since that takeover. In May, Steward, which has hospitals in eight states, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Critics—including members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)—allege that de la Torre and stripped the system’s hospitals of assets, siphoned payments from them, and loaded them with debt, all while reaping huge payouts that made him obscenely wealthy.
Nomad’s latest Base One Max 3-in-1 charger is more than $50 off
It’s great for a desk, bedside table, or just about anywhere around a home. | Image: Noamd
Nomad may run its fair share of deals on its various phone cases and Apple Watch bands, but we rarely see steep discounts on its fancy, premium multi-chargers. But right now, the second-gen Base One Max is on sale in black or silver for $119 ($51 off) when you use coupon code VERGEB1M on Nomad’s site. The 30 percent discount is good through August 25th at 11:59PM PT.
If you have a MagSafe-compatible iPhone and accompanying accessories like an Apple Watch or a set of AirPods, the Base One Max is a great 3-in-1 home charger that won’t look like an eyesore on your desk or side table. The hefty charger weighs in at 1.7 pounds thanks to its metal and glass slab-style construction, and it can simultaneously fast-charge a compatible Apple Watch while topping up an iPhone at 15W wireless charging speeds — all while charging some AirPods or another pair of earbuds that support wireless charging.
There are cheaper MagSafe-compatible options out there from other brands, but few of them look this sleek and are built this well. Also, many of them do not meet Apple’s official MagSafe certification or the new Qi standard, but rather original Qi, which tops out at slower 7.5W charging speeds on iPhones. And if any family members or other cohabitants use an Android phone, the Base One Max’s flat pad can also wirelessly charge their handset (just without the benefit of the magnets for that perfect alignment every time).
It’s great for a desk, bedside table, or just about anywhere around a home. | Image: Noamd
Nomad may run its fair share of deals on its various phone cases and Apple Watch bands, but we rarely see steep discounts on its fancy, premium multi-chargers. But right now, the second-gen Base One Max is on sale in black or silver for $119 ($51 off) when you use coupon code VERGEB1M on Nomad’s site. The 30 percent discount is good through August 25th at 11:59PM PT.
If you have a MagSafe-compatible iPhone and accompanying accessories like an Apple Watch or a set of AirPods, the Base One Max is a great 3-in-1 home charger that won’t look like an eyesore on your desk or side table. The hefty charger weighs in at 1.7 pounds thanks to its metal and glass slab-style construction, and it can simultaneously fast-charge a compatible Apple Watch while topping up an iPhone at 15W wireless charging speeds — all while charging some AirPods or another pair of earbuds that support wireless charging.
There are cheaper MagSafe-compatible options out there from other brands, but few of them look this sleek and are built this well. Also, many of them do not meet Apple’s official MagSafe certification or the new Qi standard, but rather original Qi, which tops out at slower 7.5W charging speeds on iPhones. And if any family members or other cohabitants use an Android phone, the Base One Max’s flat pad can also wirelessly charge their handset (just without the benefit of the magnets for that perfect alignment every time).