The Morning After: Snapchat is a $4 monthly subscription service for its most devoted users

Snaps optional subscription service is here, offering "exclusive, experimental and pre-release features" for $4 a month. Its apparently for "passionate" Snapchat users and launches this week in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The exclusive features are modest to start with, including the ability to change the app icon, see who re-watched a story and pin a friend to the top of your chat history as a BFF. Some of those features, like BFF, will only be available to subscribers, but others may eventually cross over to the main Snapchat app for mere muggles AKA most of us.

Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

• Sony's new gaming brand merges the best of its PlayStation and consumer gear

• FCC Commissioner urges Google and Apple to ban TikTok

• Hyundai shows off its Ioniq 6 electric vehicle for the first time

• Bowers & Wilkins debuts a redesigned version of its Px7 headphones

• 'Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration' brings together more than 90 games this fall

• Solo Stove's fire pits are up to 45 percent off for July 4th

• Most of Amazon's Eero 6 routers are on sale ahead of Prime Day

• PS Plus games for July include 'Crash 4' and 'Man of Medan'

• Big tech's abortion travel policies do nothing for its contractor workforce

The post-Roe data privacy nightmare is way bigger than period-tracking apps

Its a lot more complicated than just deleting one or two apps.

With abortion now outlawed in several states, data from period-tracking apps could be used in criminal investigations against abortion seekers, and a missed period or even simply an unlogged one could be used as evidence of a crime. There are more insidious ways people seeking abortions can be tracked online. A recent investigation from Reveal and The Markup found Facebooks advertising tools (siphon data from vast swaths of the web, including some hospitals) were used by anti-abortion groups to keep tabs on people seeking abortion services, despite Metas rules against collecting such data.

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Firefox can now automatically remove tracking from URLs

Facebook and other sites will no longer be able to track you from site to site.

Mozilla's latest Firefox browser update has a new feature that prevents sites like Facebook from tracking you across websites. Query Parameter Stripping will automatically remove strings of characters added to the end of a URL that allow Facebook, HubSpot, Olytics and other companies to track your clicks and serve targeted ads. To enable the feature, you simply select Strict for Enhanced Tracking Protection in the privacy and security settings.

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Nikon's mirrorless Z30 is an affordable, lightweight vlogging camera

It has a 20.9-megapixel sensor, flip-out display and costs $710.

Nikon

I might be a little bit taken with Sonys vlogging ZV-1 camera, and Nikon wants my custom. Thats how Im taking the news that the latter is releasing its own lightweight mirrorless camera for the YouTubers and vlogging masses.

The 20.9-megapixel APS-C Z30 is its smallest and lightest Z-series camera yet, with a flip-out display, 4K 30p video and a long 125-minute video record time on a single charge. While it has that fully articulating three-inch screen, theres no electronic viewfinder. The Z30 arrives mid-July at $710 for the body only.

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'Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope' aims to be a more modern tactical adventure

And appears just as silly.

Ubisoft

Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was a pleasant surprise and an unlikely early hit on Switch. In Sparks of Hope, your heroes can now move around in real-time no more grids and a major shakeup of how the game plays. You can still see how far a character can move in their environment, thanks to a white outline, and youll be able to figure out cover and optimal attacks on the fly. Each hero gets their turn before the baddies get to, well, return the favor. Soliani says this should help the game to feel more natural. Read on for what to expect when the game arrives later this year.

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Niantic is laying off about 90 employees and canceling four projects

'Pokmon Go' isn't going anywhere, though.

Pokmon Go developer Niantic is laying off eight percent of its workforce, around 85- to 90 jobs. The augmented reality game company has also canceled four projects. CEO John Hanke reportedly wrote in an email to employees that Niantic had to further streamline our operations in order to best position the company." Niantic has struggled to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of 2016's Pokmon Go.

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