Facebook activates Safety Check following Orlando massacre

It’s Monday, June 13 2016 and this is going to be a big day in the tech world. Tech journalists in particular have their work cut out for them as both Apple’s WWDC 2016 conference and the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, get underway in earnest this morning. And, naturally, the rumors are flying. For Apple’s part, the news is primarily software related.

Apple is expected to rename OS X to Mac OS, Siri is supposed to get a lot more helpful, Apple Music is supposed to get better, and Apple Pay looks like it is going to see a big expansion, to mobile browsers, allowing users to buy whatever they want using only their fingerprint. Apple is also expected to answer Amazon and Google’s smart speakers in some way, though exactly what form that will take is unknown.

As for E3, a lot of news has already broken. We’ve now seen what EA and Bethesda are working on. EA’s big announcement had to be Titanfall 2, which will officially include a single-player campaign, something that was glaringly missing from the original. We also got a glimpse of Mass Effect: Andromeda, Battlefield 1, FIFA 17, and we now know EA is going to make something like 250 Star Wars games. Seriously, they’re making a lot of Star Wars games.

Bethesda on the other hand is bringing back Quake in the form of Quake Champions, Skyrim is coming to Xbox One and PS4, and both Fallout 4 and Doom are coming to VR.

Of course, new titles are fun to see, but new hardware? That gets a lot of folks talking. Microsoft will announce the new Xbox One S today, a slimmer, 4K-capable console starting at $300. You can find out more about it here.

Digital Trends will be feverishly covering both big events all day, so check back often for the latest breaking news.

This past weekend marked the first time Facebook activated its Safety Check feature in the US. Safety Check lets users tell others they are OK in the face of a tragedy, and allows concerned friends and family to check on loved ones they may be worried about. As you’re probably aware, the event that triggered Facebook’s Safety Check was a deadly mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando that claimed the lives of 50 people, and injured 53 more.

So, if you have any friends or family living or visiting the Orlando area, you may have gotten a notification. Safety Check was originally developed after the deadly Tsunami that struck the coast of Japan back in 2011, but it wasn’t officially launched until 2014.

And although it was technically activated in the US earlier this year by accident, this is the first time Facebook intentionally activated the feature, making it the 16^th time it was used globally in 2016.

That’s it for DT Daily today, we’ll see you tomorrow.