TechCrunch | It’s not infrequent these days if you’re a big tech company to receive a brusquely worded letter from a group of senators or representatives asking you to explain yourself on some topic or another. One recent such letter sent to Apple and Alphabet asks specifically about practices meant to track users or their interactions with the phone without their knowledge or consent. Luckily Apple has much to be proud of on that front.

Computerworld | IT admins surveyed by Susan Bradley, who moderates the PatchManagement.org mailing list, said Microsoft's current strategy is failing. So she took their concerns to Microsoft leaders, including CEO Satya Nadella, and asked them to make changes.

Engadget | When Samsung unveiled its first-ever 1-terabit flash chip, it promised that massive SSD storage devices would soon follow. As promised, it's now producing 4TB SSDs, and best of all, these drives are not for cloud companies or enterprises. "Samsung's new 4-bit SATA SSD will herald a massive move to terabyte-SSDs for consumers," said executive VP of memory sales Jaesoo Han. The SSDs are the "industry's first" to use 4-bit V-NAND memory tech.

Fortune | Two years ahead of the next Olympics, Tokyo 2020 is already miles ahead of its predecessors when it comes to tech and security. NEC Corporation, a Japanese IT giant, announced that it would be providing a new and extensive facial recognition system for the 2020 Olympic Summer and Paralympic Games in Tokyo to identify more than 300,000 attendees, including athletes, officials, media, and staff.

TechRepublic | Jack Wallen shows you how to retrieve your Google 2FA backup codes and how best to use them.

Atlassian Blog | Spend the time creating an incident communication plan now so you can enjoy peace of mind, team harmony, and happier customers later.

Dark Reading | Companies can squash the proliferation of shadow IT if they listen to employees, create transparent guidelines, and encourage an open discussion about the balance between security and productivity.

Fast Company | At what point will Google’s predictive technology grow so powerful that we begin thinking of its personalized recommendations as our own?

G Suite Updates | In Gmail, replies to emails are grouped together as “conversations,” to make them easier to digest and follow. Some users, however, prefer to see each of their emails listed individually in their inbox. Google is now bringing this same feature to the Gmail Android and iOS apps.