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Tech giant Apple has scored a huge victory in its $1 billion original programming push, signing a multiyear deal with host and media magnate Oprah Winfrey to produce as-of-yet unspecified streaming content. According to the Wall Street Journal, the signing of Winfrey is expected to play into its long-rumored launch of a “direct-to-consumer video service”…
Twitter recently “accidentally” banned a whole lot of users for joining the service before they were thirteen years old. The users, now “old enough” to use Twitter “responsibly,” have been upset, and Twitter has a whole thread on steps its taking to bring these “not children” back online. But here is something that is important…
A California judge decided Thursday not to throw out a lawsuit filed against Twitter that accused the company of violating the free speech rights of white supremacist Jared Taylor when Twitter banned him from the platform late last year. The Associated Press reported San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harold Kahn narrowed the scope of the…
For the past month or so, inboxes the world over have been awash with emails about updated privacy policies and new permissions required by the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). You probably haven’t been reading those emails, and that’s bad news for email marketers. According to a CNBC report, people—Americans, especially—aren’t opening GDPR…
The FBI just got its hands on a whole lot of Michael Cohen’s encrypted communications. In a letter submitted Friday, the United States Attorney’s Office revealed that it obtained a treasure trove of messages and call logs from a BlackBerry that belonged to President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. According to the letter, the FBI was…
Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former key executives of blood-testing startup Theranos, have been indicted by a grand jury on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, The Washington Post reports. The news comes three months after news that both were charged with “massive” fraud by…
The rate at which deepfake videos are advancing is both impressive and deeply unsettling. But researchers have described a new method for detecting a “telltale sign” of these manipulated videos, which map one person’s face onto the body of another. It’s a flaw even the average person would notice: a lack of blinking. Researchers from…
Lawmakers in the U.S. have taken a greater interest in the failures of tech companies lately but most of the focus has been on Facebook and Google while Jeff Bezos has been busy making a reported $230,000 a minute. Now it’s Amazon’s turn in the barrel. On Thursday, Senators sent a list of questions regarding…
At this point, anytime you see the word unlimited in relation to phone plans, you should probably just assume you’re being misled. And after seeing the hijinks Verizon is trying to pull with its latest “unlimited” cell phone plan, it seemed like a good time to check in on the other major carriers to get…
A key vote is taking place in California next week. Amid intense lobbying pressure, experts say it could eventually impact efforts by other states to reestablish net neutrality in the wake of the FCC’s decision to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order. On Wednesday, a group of legislators in the California State Assembly will decide…
There were rumors of a Playstation 5 and news on the next generation of Xbox, but this E3 was ultimately pretty light on the cool hardware. We knew that was the case given the sheer amount of VR accessories most of us can’t or won’t use any time soon. Still, there were some cool controllers,…
Steven Seagal and DJ Khaled have taught us that if a celebrity endorses a cryptocurrency project, you should immediately assume it might be a scam. But William Shatner seems to be backing a pretty interesting crypto-mining initiative. The actor who’s best known for playing Captain Kirk and giving odd line-readings didn’t intend to become the latest…
On Friday morning Apple Maps was unusable, apparently. It took us quite some time to notice, but the Apple aficionados at 9to5Mac reported this morning that the app wasn’t working for most users. While you could still open the app and see your location, when you tried to get navigation information, you were hit with…
A bullet train en route to Tokyo reportedly struck and killed a 52-year-old man on Thursday afternoon, but the man’s death wasn’t uncovered until some 20 miles later, where authorities made a grisly discovery. When the train’s driver heard the sound of the impact, he didn’t send a report to the operation center, as he…
A woman in Arizona filed a lawsuit against the University of Central Florida’s Delta Sigma Phi fraternity as well as five of its members after she says she discovered intimate photos and videos of her had been shared in the fraternity’s secret Facebook group “Dog Pound.” According to the lawsuit, frat brothers “routinely” shared nude…
Hot off a contemptuous meeting at the G7 Summit after which Trump seemed intent on starting a trade war with Canada—and following whatever the hell just happened in Singapore—Trump turned his sights back to China on Friday by announcing $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese “high-tech” goods. President Trump floated the idea of imposing taxes…
One current and five former Fitbit employees accused of knowingly stealing trade secrets from former employer Jawbone, which ceased operation in 2017, have been indicted. The two companies have gone to court in the past over similar allegations. If convicted, the defendants could face up to 10 years in prison. According to a statement from…
It’s been over six weeks since lava fissures began erupting on Hawaii’s Big Island, and there’s still no end in sight. New videos taken by the US Geological Survey reveal the dramatic extent to which the encroaching lava has reshaped the surrounding landscape, turning once gorgeous beaches into a smoldering pile of volcanic waste. This…
AT&T and Time-Warner wasted no time completing their merger after the Department of Justice decided not to seek an injunction against the deal on Thursday. It is now complete. AT&T is the proud new owner of Game of Thrones, DC Comics, CNN, Harry Potter, and numerous other properties to leverage in its quest to crush…
There you are just wanting to get on with some casual Facebooking but all of a sudden you can’t get into your account—and what you thought were your username and password aren’t working any longer. If you find yourself locked out of one of your social media accounts, take a deep breath, and follow these…
