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The iPhone 12 and 12 mini have been on sale for months now, but today’s the day you can buy one in purple. I’ve had the purple iPhone 12 for a little while, and I must say: It’s adorable. However, it’s not the exact shade of purple I thought it was—for some reason, in person,…
Apple’s App Store—and its so-called “Apple tax”—have been at the center of several recent lawsuits. In the latest development, the European Union has charged Apple with allegedly “abus[ing] its dominant position” in the music streaming market. The charges stem from an initial complaint filed by Spotify in 2019. At the time, Spotify accused Apple of…
Although nowhere near as massive as Wenger’s Swiss Army Knife Giant that famously packed 87 implements into a seven-pound tool, Victorinox’s new 73-function Swiss Champ XXL will still stretch your pocket to its breaking point. It comes with a price tag that will break any forgetful owner’s heart the day the TSA has to confiscate…
After news leaked out about a feud between Roku and Google earlier this week, today Roku announced its devices would no longer support the YouTube TV app for new subscribers. In an email sent out to customers today, Roku said the company decided to let its contract with Google for YouTube TV expire, claiming that…
The benefits of two-factor authentication (2FA) are clear: A person trying to get into your accounts will need something else besides your username and password, which makes it more difficult to hack you. That something else is often a code sent via SMS or through an app, but there’s another option: a physical security key. These keys…
Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest people on the planet, sent a tweet Thursday night about the real problem with self-driving cars. And as you can probably guess by now, it’s one of those things that sounds profound until you stop to think about it for three seconds. That’s more or less Musk’s brand at…
Netflix rolled out its new “Play Something” feature this week, a shuffle play option for when you have thousands of TV shows and movies at your fingertips and no idea what to watch. Sure, it’s a first-world problem. But as a routine sufferer of decision paralysis, I’ve been hoping for something like this for what…
Part of Microsoft’s great big overhaul to Windows 10 finally includes some major changes to Bluetooth support and audio endpoints. These changes are now live in the latest Windows 10 Insider preview build, reports The Verge. The bigger of the two changes involves adding support for the Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) over Bluetooth. Currently, Windows only…
As more and more social media platforms start cooking up their own Clubhouse clones, Instagram is adding new features to its existing livestreaming service to get in on the voice chat craze. On Thursday, Instagram announced it’s rolling out the option to turn off your audio or video while using Instagram Live. Instagram tested these…
Tech stocks tumbled on Thursday following a Reutersinterview in which U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh stated that many of the millions of gig workers across the country should, in fact, be classified as employees, rather than independent contractors. As Reuters noted in their own coverage, shares tanked to varying degrees for four companies in particular:…
A new, Big-Tech-backed coalition is lobbying the Biden administration to more aggressively pursue the threat of ransomware. In a report sent to the White House this week, members of the new group—simply called the Ransomware Task Force—have asked the president and the U.S. intelligence community to prioritize the disruption of cybercriminal networks involved in the…
Another day, another mostly anonymously sourced story about unidentified assailants supposedly assaulting U.S. government employees around the globe. This time, according to CNN, federal agencies are looking into something closer to home: symptoms suffered by a White House employee in Virginia and National Security Council staffer near the south lawn of the White House. To…
It’s always awkward when you ask the robot (i.e. your phone’s digital assistant) to call a friend or family member, and then it responds with a cold and butchered pronunciation of that name. Now you can help stave off those unfortunate uncanny valley moments by teaching the Google Assistant how to pronounce your name and…
A Jean-Michel Basquiat has possibly averted annihilation by NFT. Earlier this week, a seller who only identified themselves as “DAYstrom” attempted to auction an NFT of Basquiat’s 1986 drawing Free Comb with Pagoda, granting the winner the option to destroy the work so that only the NFT would survive. Whether the whole thing is a…
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled this week that posting plans for so-called “ghost guns”—homemade firearms and firearm parts designed to route around gun regulations—is technically legal. The ruling, which affirmed the Trump-era removal of these gun and gun parts from the State Department’s Munitions List, means that the blueprints…
Last week, security consultant Bob Diachenko found an unsecured database run by the Etsy-owned music marketplace Reverb. The exposed database, which contained user data like phone numbers, emails, addresses, and even order information, was dangerous in its own right, but then Diachenko figured out how many customers were affected: 5.6 million, by his reckoning, an…
The New York City Police Department’s contract with the robot dog that spawned countless Black Mirror memes has been mercifully cut short. On Wednesday, an NYPD deputy commissioner confirmed to the New York Times that in response to the pretty universal backlash stirred up by the so-called Digidog—along with a hefty subpoena from city council…
If you’re thinking about getting a new iPad or Mac in 2021, you should factor in a longer-than-usual wait time. Although Apple raked in an obscene amount of money this past quarter, CEO Tim Cook also warned in Apple’s Wednesday earnings call that there will be supply issues affecting iPads and Macs in the second…
The Snactiv doesn’t completely reimagine chopsticks but instead uses them as a starting point for a new utensil.
How do you define revenge porn? It might seem easy enough when it’s an angry man posting a naked photo of his ex-girlfriend to 4Chan. But what happens when it’s an image of a lewd act in the workplace that touches off a national conversation about gender bias, power imbalances, and sexual assault? Australia was…
