水・加熱不要で自動噴霧。人感センサーライト搭載「Sumatacoアロマディフューザー」

＼Sumatacoアロマディフューザーのポイント／ ●水や熱を加えずに100％純粋なエッセンシャルオイルを噴霧 ●人感センサーライト搭載 ●10分間隔の噴霧で起動音も超静か ●花粉対策 ●オイル瓶を本体に直接セットし、スイッチを一回押すだけの簡単操作 ●コンパクトなデザインでどこへでも持ち運び可能 ●お手入れ不要 「Sumatacoアロマディフューザー」は植物から抽出した精油（エッセンシャルオイル）の香り成分を効率的に揮発させて、部屋全体を天然の心地よい香りで満たします。家でリラックスしたい時や、入…

タブレットのAmazon売れ筋ランキング。電子書籍やコミック、映画など、エンタメには大画面がうれしい！

ソファやベッドで電子コミックや映画を楽しむなら、大画面なタブレットが便利。定期的にセールが行われるFire HDシリーズ、豊富なアプリが利用できるiPadシリーズ、実売2万円弱のAndroidタブレットが熾烈な上位争いを繰り広げています。Amazonの「タブレット」売れ筋ランキングを紹介します。…

Nine women accuse Sony of systemic sexism in a potential class-action lawsuit

In November, former PlayStation IT security analyst Emma Majo filed a lawsuit against Sony, claiming the company discriminated against women at an institutional level. Majo alleged she was fired because she spoke up about gender bias at the studio, noting she was terminated shortly after submitting a signed statement to management detailing sexism she experienced there. 

Majo later filed the paperwork to turn her case into a class-action lawsuit, and just last month Sony attempted to have the whole thing thrown out, claiming her allegations were too vague to stand up to legal scrutiny. Plus, Sony’s lawyers said, no other women were stepping forward with similar claims.

Today, eight additional women joined the lawsuit against Sony. The new plaintiffs are current and former employees, and only one of them has chosen to remain anonymous. One plaintiff, Marie Harrington, worked at Sony for 17 years and eventually became a senior director of program management and chief of staff to senior VP of engineering George Cacciopo.

“When I left Sony, I told the SVP and the Director of HR Rachel Ghadban in the Rancho Bernardo office that the reason I was leaving was systemic sexism against females,” Harrington said in a court statement. “The Director of HR simply said, ‘I understand.’ She did not ask for any more information. I had spoken with the Director of HR many times before about sexism against females.”

Harrington claimed women were overlooked for promotions, and said that during annual review sessions, Sony Interactive Entertainment engineering leaders rarely discussed female employees as potential “high performers.” She said that in their April 2019 session, only four of the 70 employees under review were women, and while all of the men in this group were marked as high performers, just two of the women were. 

“Further, when two of the females were discussed, managers spent time discussing the fact that they have families,” Harrington’s statement reads. “Family status was never discussed for any males.”

The remaining women shared similar stories in their statements, with the common theme being a lack of opportunity for female employees to advance and systemic favoritism toward male employees. The plaintiffs claimed male leaders at Sony made derogatory comments including, “you just need to marry rich,” and, “I find that in general, women can’t take criticism.” 

One plaintiff alleged that while on a work trip to E3, her superior tricked her into having drinks with him at the hotel bar, hit on her even after she declined, and told other employees that “he was going to try to ‘hit that.'” Another plaintiff shared a story about a gender equality meeting at Sony that had a five-person panel, all of them men.

The lawsuit against Sony comes at a time of reckoning for many major video game studios, including Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft and Riot Games. Activision Blizzard is facing a lawsuit and multiple investigations into claims of institutional sexism, sexual harassment and gender discrimination, while Ubisoft has long faced similar allegations from former and current employees. Riot Games paid $100 million in December to settle a class-action lawsuit over workplace sexual harassment and discrimination.

Sony has not yet responded to the latest movement in the class-action lawsuit, though it denies Majo’s claims of gender discrimination. The company has requested the lawsuit be dismissed, and that will be decided in a hearing in April.

Ukraine may move its top-secret data and servers abroad

Fears that Russia could steal top-secret government documents has caused Ukrainian authorities to explore potentially moving its data and servers to another country, reportedReuters. While the original plan is still to protect the country’s IT infrastructure, moving the most sensitive data to another location is a viable Plan B, Victor Zhora— the deputy chief of Ukraine’s information protection arm—told the news service.

Ukraine has already faced a litany of aggressive cyberattacks from the neighboring nation, including last month’s penetration of its military and energy networks. Russia also attempted to interfere with Ukraine’s 2014 presidential election and regularly launches attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, leading to outages that last for days. 

The Ukrainian government made the precautionary move of migrating its computer systems in Kyiv in 2014, following Russia’s occupation of Crimea. Ukrainian cyber teams have developed plans to disable infrastructure and transfer back-ups if its networks become compromised, Zhora told Politico.

But the fact that Ukraine’s most sensitive data is centralized in Kyiv presents a problem if Russia’s military occupies the capital. At the time of publication, Russian troops are currently encircling Kyiv, and experts estimate they could attack the city within days. Ukraine is already moving some sensitive data and servers to remote areas, out of Russia’s reach. 

Ukraine hasn’t released details on where it might attempt to relocate its sensitive governmental data, but shifting it to an allied nation might provide more than just physical distance from Russian’s military. Reuters reported that cyberattacks against said data, were it stored within the borders of an ally nation, might trigger NATO’s collective defense clause, which requires all member nations to respond if one is attacked.

For now, Ukraine’s Parliament still has to give its seal of approval before the nation’s sensitive data can be moved.

‘The DioField Chronicle’ is a new strategy RPG that looks like ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’

In 1997, Square Enix released one of the finest games of the original PlayStation era in Final Fantasy Tactics. Outside of a handful of remasters and spinoffs, however, the company has been reluctant to return to the genre in a meaningful way. And while we may never get a proper sequel to Tactics, the good news is Square Enix is working on a new tactical RPG. 

During Sony’s most recent State of Play on Wednesday, the publisher announced The DioField Chronicle. And if what you loved about Final FantasyTactics was its sprawling story and iconic art by Akihiko Yoshida, you’re in luck because DioField looks to have both on offer. You’ll lead the forces of the Kingdom of Alletain, a neutral island nation that gets dragged into a conflict with the sinister Trovelt-Schoevian Empire. Instead of a turn-based battle system, engagements play out in real-time and it appears you can control more than one character at a time.    

Square plans to release The DioField Chronicle later this year on PlayStation 4 and PS5.

Toddlers can get their frag on with VTech’s baby gamer chair

Kids love to imitate the adults in their lives. That’s why you can find such odd items in the toy aisle as baby-sized irons, mops and vacuums. Now you can add more weirdo item to that list, one that has some members of the Engadget staff howling with laughter: A baby gamer chair. Yes, you read that right. Baby. Gamer. Chair.

VTech, long-time purveyor of kiddie tablets and educational toys is now selling a tiny gaming chair for budding streamers and future Fortnite players. The $50 Level Up Gaming Chair is a plastic simulacra of bigger leather seats made for adults, complete with slick black armrests and a molded back with two cut-out sections for air flow. However, instead of wheels, the chair rests on four boot-like blue feet, so your baby won’t be tipping over while they’re pretending to curse out other players on the included headset. The tiny non-functional headset even has a tiny non-functional mic to complete the look.

Because this is VTech after all, the Level Up Gaming Chair has some interactive electronic parts, namely a light-up keyboard that kids can play with to learn numbers and letters and even piano keys — which we admit, is actually a step up from traditional mechanical gaming keyboards. The keyboard console can be detached for on-the-go play, and the tray it normally rests on can be used for snack time as well so kids never have to leave their gaming throne when it goes on sale this fall. (We recommend pairing it with Fisher Price’s Laugh and Learn Controller.)