Tech news, analysis, culture, business, security, and more
Excuse me, sir. Sir! If you would put down your newspaper forthwith, and grant me your fullest attention for a situation most dire. For I have learned news most terrible concerning the electronic web, and its various scoundrels and malcontents. Yes, my good man, though you may be a stranger to me, surely a development…
Long after it became painfully clear that Facebook was being manipulated as a tool to undermine democracy and cause harm, the social media company still struggles to keep its platform free of the kind of garbage specially engineered to effectively warp reality—even as recently as this month. And previous systems it’s employed to combat the…
We have a lot of questions about Facebook’s CEO, some of which we’ve posed on this very website. But a new interview with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has introduced one mystery we absolutely must unravel: Did Mark Zuckerberg shoot a goat to death with lasers? Speaking to Rolling Stone, Dorsey was asked about his “most…
For at least the third time in as many days, a large cache of sensitive data has been reportedly exposed due to a misconfigured Elasticsearch server. In this case, a whopping 24 million financial and banking records are said to be involved. On Wednesday, independent security researcher Bob Diachenko disclosed publicly that more than a…
Whenever I go out to dinner with a bunch of friends, and we split the check, multiple people wind up throwing in those heavy, slate-grey credit cards bearing Amazon’s smiley arrow. Almost everyone I know has the Amazon Prime credit card because it comes with a killer rewards program, especially if you’re an Amazon Prime…
Netflix is raising prices, but its competitor is opting for a different tack—sort of. Hulu’s just announced that its cheapest subscription plan price will drop to $6 a month—two whole dollars less than the current $8 price. That said, Hulu’s more expensive “no commercial” plan will stay at its current $12 price. The same holds…
NewsGuard is a startup organization that aims to evaluate the reliability of news organizations and give web users a quick rating for how much they should trust what they’re reading. As of this week, the company’s plug-in now comes packaged in Microsoft’s mobile Edge browser. It’s a development that everyone should give their close attention.…
Top developers behind ad-blocking and anti-tracking browser extensions say they’re alarmed by potential changes coming to Chrome recently disclosed in a public Google document. As a result, at least one company is now threatening possible legal action. The proposed design changes would replace the API relied upon by privacy extensions like uBlock and Ghostery with…
In late December the friends and family members of the Parkland school shooting victims started getting alarming messages through Instagram from users names such as nikolas.killed.your.sister, nikolas.the.murderer, and the.douglas.shooter: “They had their whole lives ahead of them and I fucking stole it from them.” “I killed your friends, baby girl” “I took a shit on…
Instagram broke its silence on its algorithmic kerfuffle this week, taking to Twitter to address rumors that it was limiting the reach of users’ posts. Long story short—no, its feed doesn’t curtail your posts to just 7 percent of your followers, the company said. Instead, Instagram just curates your feed based on the posts and…
Google, Facebook, and Amazon got more shit than ever from Washington last year, all while spending record amounts lobbying lawmakers. New filings reveal that altogether the three companies spent more than $48 million in a year pocked with congressional hearings, revelations regarding Russian interference, and little concrete progress by lawmakers who are putting new pressure…
Resurrected back in 2017, Sony’s robotic dog Aibo made a big splash at CES 2018, but there wasn’t much fanfare for the pup at Sony’s CES booth this year. A few weeks later, however, Sony has announced a new version of the robotic companion featuring a beagle-inspired tri-color paint job, and some new tricks that expand…
A few weeks ago, a leaked video of an intriguing, dual-folding bendy phone hit the net, and since then I’ve wanted to know everything about it. Then today, in a post on Weibo, Xiaomi president Lin Bin released a teaser clip for an upcoming device that seemingly confirms Xiaomi as the maker of the gadget…
Apple isn’t known for its web apps, though you can now access a lot of its core apps (in basic form) through iCloud on the web. It doesn’t include Apple Music, but Apple does make APIs available for the service that other programmers can hook into—and that means there are now several third-party online players…
The calendar has to be one of the most-used apps on any smartphone—keeping track of appointments, birthdays, vacations, and more—but if you’ve stuck with the one Apple or Google gives you on your phone then you’re missing out. These are five of the best alternative calendar apps that give you something more. 1) Outlook (iOS,…
What does the future of getting a job in the tech industry look like? According to the CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty, it’s important that tech companies focus on hiring people with valuable skills, not just people with college degrees. Rometty made the comments yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The CEO…
In an incident similar to ones which shut down the UK’s Gatwick Airport before Christmas last month and another at Heathrow in early January, New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport grounded all departing and incoming flights on Tuesday after two pilots reported spotted a drone. Per the New York Times, the pilots saw the drone…
Pretty much half the news media is backpedaling from their coverage of footage of white Covington Catholic High School students in MAGA hats taunting and harassing a Native American elder, Nathan Phillips, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in DC amid the Indigenous Peoples’ March earlier this month. Footage of the incident went viral…
A California family said they got the scare of a lifetime this past weekend when their smart security cameras began falsely warning of three North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles headed to Los Angeles, Chicago, and Ohio. Thankfully, the missile warning was a hoax. Less comforting was the fact that the family’s Nest security cameras had…
A case against Yelp that could have had sweeping influence on the way U.S. citizens use the internet will not be heard by the Supreme Court, despite a petition from one of President Trumps’ oft-used lawyers for the court to reconsider the case. The case began in California in 2016 when attorney Dawn Hassell claimed…
