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During Facebook’s F8 developer conference today, human CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the availability of the Oculus Go, the company’s latest VR headset and its first standalone device for virtual reality that doesn’t require a PC or smartphone. While smartphone-free VR has been in the works for some time, a fully functional VR headset for $200—the…
At Facebook’s F8 conference on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg discussed how Instagram will be changing in the coming weeks. The upgrades include video chat, an Explore redesign, AR camera effects, and a bullying filter. The new video chat feature will allow users to talk with one or more people. “You’re going to be able to just…
Facebook, still reeling from a scandal concerning the improper sharing of tens of millions of its users’ data, now wants to get even more intimately involved in your life. At the F8 developer conference on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network will soon offer dating features slated to roll out later this year.…
If you were looking for another reason to hate crypto culture, then YouTube has a plethora of Bitcoin rap videos for you to peruse. Every single one of these blockchain anthems is just as bad as you can imagine, and often worse. However, if you yourself want to become a cryptocurrency rapper, it will behoove…
Facebook is holding its F8 developer conference on Tuesday. Given that it’s been going through a lot of trouble related to third-party developers it brought a surprise announcement to take your mind off of privacy concerns. It will soon give you control over the information that apps and websites are seeing about you, and let…
For a brief period on Tuesday morning, Facebook asked at least some of its users to report whether every single post in their feed contained hate speech. Right above where one would normally like or comment on a post, Facebook users were asked: “Does this post contain hate speech?” For users who saw this request…
Google Chrome users will soon encounter a full-page warning whenever visiting a website whose SSL certificate is not registered with a public certificate log. For users, this means additional protection from websites whose SSL certificates may have been maliciously acquired, exposing them to server impersonation and other attacks. Whether by compromising a certificate authority or…
The British government keeps asking Mark Zuckerberg to testify about his company’s abysmal privacy record, and the Facebook CEO keeps turning them down. Zuck likes to send his lackeys instead, but the UK has had about enough of Zuck’s bullshit. The next time he’s in the UK, the government is going to make Zuckberberg testify.…
In a unanimous decision yesterday, California’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of independent contractors seeking employee status from a last-mile delivery service in a case that could have wide ramifications for Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Instacart, and other companies buoyed by the sweat of the gig economy. First filed in April of 2005, the suit alleged…
The Coinhive service was always intended to help people mine cryptocurrency for good, but we’ve mostly seen it deployed by bad actors hijacking people’s CPUs without their permission. UNICEF is giving everyone a chance to support refugees with the mining tool just by opening a webpage. The humanitarian program is trying to raise money for…
There’s something not quite right about North Korea’s antivirus software. SiliVaccine, as the software is known, appears to contain a decade-old component pirated from a Japanese security firm. What’s more, investigators who’ve examined the software say it was purposefully designed to ignore a known malware signature linked to a number of malware families. The software…
Few people would think of the British cartoon character Peppa Pig as a subversive icon. But don’t tell that to the Chinese government. China has started to ban Peppa Pig from social media for being too “gangster,” deleting over 30,000 videos of the cartoon pig on one platform alone. The Peppa Pig TV show first…
Disney is currently broadcasting a livestream of the sunrise at the Magic Kingdom theme park in Florida. I have no idea why Disney is doing this, but it’s honestly just what I needed this morning. The livestream started at 6:00am local time (ET) and sunrise is scheduled for around 6:45am. Again, Disney hasn’t issued a…
Uber’s seemingly never-ending series of scandals could fill several books, but perhaps the most awful and damaging stories have been reports of the ridesharing service’s drivers sexually harassing or assaulting passengers. A CNN investigation released on Monday shows how huge the scale of that problem is, with at least 103 Uber drivers in 20 major…
Apple put up, and then took down, a job posting that suggested the company is preparing to give up on wireless chips manufactured by Qualcomm—a supplier it is currently in a contentious legal battle with—and is possibly cutting out Intel as well for future generations of iPhones. According to a report in Cult of Mac,…
Jan Koum, the billionaire CEO of Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp, is leaving the company following disputes over “the popular messaging service’s strategy and Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption,” the Washington Post reported on Monday. Koum will additionally step down from Facebook’s board, and was in the process of informing other…
We’ve become accustomed to seeing high-profile class action lawsuits result in paltry payouts for plaintiffs, but this is ridiculous. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments over a privacy case that Google settled in 2013. The search giant agreed to pay out millions, but that money largely went to the plaintiffs’ attorneys and…
Facebook’s annual developer conference, kicking off Tuesday at 10am Pacific, will be one to remember, at least for Mark Zuckerberg. The completely human CEO has had a whirlwind of a month, what with the two days he spent testifying in front of a very confused U.S. Congress, the controversy surrounding his company’s data-sharing practices, and…
An unnamed Facebook security engineer is accused of using data accessible to them at work to stalk women online—and Facebook says it is investigating the situation. The allegations surfaced yesterday in a tweet from Jackie Stokes, the founder of Spyglass Security. “I’ve been made aware that a security engineer currently employed at Facebook is likely…
A blaze swept through Amazon Fulfillment Center RIC1 in Dinwiddie County, Virginia this morning, overwhelming the building’s internal fire suppression systems. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that calls to local fire departments came in just before 10am, and six nearby departments responded according to Mark Tenia, a reporter for WRIC. The RIC1 facility, which opened in…
